Significant new projects are reshaping the retail landscape in major Polish agglomerations, including the redevelopment of older assets, and the arrival of new retail formats.
According to the Jones Lang LaSalle’s Polish Retail Market Profile – Q2 2013, during the first half of the year 130,000 m2 of retail space in shopping centres was delivered to the market. Of this total 74,500 m2 was in seven projects: four new and three extended shopping centres.
Total shopping centre stock in Poland is now 8.1m m2 in 353 projects. The entire modern retail stock (including shopping centres, retail parks and outlet centres) in Poland totalled almost 11.3m m2 of GLA.
Construction activity across the country remains strong. Some 730,000 m2 is at the development stage, while more than 370,000 m2 is expected to enter the market in H2, and 500,000 m2 throughout all 2013.
There has been a shift in interest towards major markets since 64% of this year’s pipeline will be in major Polish agglomerations; 29% will be in cities of below 100,000 residents, with the remainder in medium-sized markets.
The dominance of the big metropolitan areas in these statistics is due to the delivery of large projects, including Poznan City Centre, Galeria Katowicka, Riviera (the new name for the extended Wzgórze centre), Auchan Bronowice in Kraków, and Galeria Miejska Plac Unii in Warsaw.
Most of these will redraw the retail landscape in their respective markets. Similarly, in terms of the size of future projects, more than 75% of new openings this year will be in medium and large schemes.
