| | Property EU reports that Russia has overtaken France as Europe’s largest shopping centre market, thanks to a number of large-scale malls that were delivered in H2 2014, according to new research from Cushman & Wakefield.
Russia’s total shopping centre stock climbed to more than 17.7 million m2 at the end of last year, overtaking France’s 17.66 million m2 of GLA. In doing so, Russia accounted for more than half of all the shopping centre space added to the market in H2 2014, C&W found.
The UK followed Russia and France as Europe’s third-largest market with 17.1 million m2.
According to C&W's latest European Shopping Centre Development report, total shopping centre floor space across Europe totalled 152.3 million m2 on 1 January 2015, a 3.3% year-on-year increase on the year-earlier period.
While Western Europe currently accounts for 69% of total built space, development activity in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) surged ahead in H2 2014, with 2.2 million m2 of space delivered to the market compared to 981,000 m2 in Western Europe over the same period.
Development activity throughout Europe has been driven by the need to meet consumer demand for larger centres which offer a greater diversity of retailers, an array of leisure activities and a wider choice of food and drink offerings, C&W said.
Western Europe’s biggest markets have seen an increasing number of extensions and refurbishments as developers seek to ‘future-proof’ small or outdated centres, whilst CEE is still dominated by the creation of new, dominant regional centres that serve a wide catchment area.
These trends will continue into 2015 and 2016, with Russia and Turkey continuing to dominate the development pipeline as overall density remains at a low level, albeit the completion of projects of Russia will be subject to financing conditions and the wider geopolitical environment. In Western Europe, development activity in markets with lower densities such as Italy and Spain is also gaining momentum, with Italy’s pipeline more than doubling that of the UK over the next two years. |