Size matters

The impressive wave of long-anticipated shopping centre openings across the CEE region recently has cast a shadow on the growth of another important branch of the retail market. “Retail parks have been very successful around the world, but in Poland this sector remains under-developed. Retail parks represent the next level of development in modern retail. They have one major advantage – in comparison to shopping centres these schemes are much easier to build. The construction work usually takes a year to complete,” claims Grażyna Melibruda, associate director of the retail agency at King Sturge. Large-scale projects such as Inter IKEA Centre Group Polska’s Park Handlowy Targówek in Warsaw or Helical Poland’s Europa Centralna in Gliwice (up to 67,000 sqm) might give the wrong impression to shoppers: size doesn’t actually matter – at least when it comes to retail parks. An increasing number of real estate developers, including Saller, C.R.E.D.O