S IMMO AG: Shopping centres celebrate fifth birthday

In the spring of 2010, stock exchange listed S IMMO AG opened the largest shopping centres in Bulgaria and Romania at the time: Serdika Center in Sofia and Sun Plaza in Bucharest. On their fifth anniversary, Friedrich Wachernig, Member of S IMMO AG’s Management Board, takes stock of the success the two shopping centres have enjoyed: “It’s hard to believe that already five years have passed since the openings. At roughly EUR 200m each, these centres were the largest investments in the history of the company – and we entered into these ventures during a time that was anything but easy. Despite this, we financed the projects entirely with equity, successfully placed them on the market, filled them with lots of well-known international tenants, and very successfully managed them through the extremely challenging times of the past several years.”

And this work is bearing fruit: Sun Plaza had 13 million visitors last year and saw the opening of 25 new shops by prominent tenants. More than 40,000 people came to the Serdika Center on Black Friday alone. Both shopping centres are fully let. The office spaces connected to each of the centres are nearly fully let as well, with renowned, successful tenants such as PepsiCo, Sutherland, and Merck.

Sun Plaza
Sun Plaza is S IMMO AG’s second-largest development project and in 2013 became the first shopping centre in Romania to be awarded a green building certificate from BREEAM. It spans 80,000 m² and offers a wide variety of international shops, a food court with seating for 1,200 people, and numerous entertainment options, with a spacious summer terrace and a 15-screen cinema. The shopping centre is located in the south of Bucharest at the junction between four major traffic arteries. In addition to direct access to the metro – a unique feature in Romania – the centre has an excellent connection to the road network and to numerous forms of public transportation. It also offers more than 2,000 parking spaces. The connected Sun Offices building has an occupancy rate of 95% and has also been BREEAM-certified since 2013.

Serdika Center
Serdika Center was the largest shopping centre in Bulgaria when it opened, with over 200 shops. The project was planned and realised in cooperation with ECE, Europe’s largest shopping centre operator. Spanning three stories, the centre offers visitors the largest selection of international and domestic fashion, restaurants, and numerous shops offering a wide range of services. Above the shopping centre, the building offers roughly 30,000 m² of premium office space, which like the shopping centre has been awarded with DGNB Gold certification and is now nearly fully let. The property is situated on the centrally located Sitnyakovo Boulevard in the district of Oborishte, which is part of the city centre.