Russia, Turkey lead in development of new malls

ISTANBUL/LONDON - Hürriyet Daily News

The 212 Shopping Center in Bağcılar, Istanbul, is one of hundreds of malls that has been built in Turkey in the past 13 years. Only Russia built more malls than Turkey in the first half of the year, according to a new report. DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL

Russia delivered more new shopping space in the first six months of the year than any other country in Europe, followed by Turkey. The two countries accounted for nearly half of all European shopping center space opened in the first half of the year, according to the latest European Shopping Centre Development report published this week by global property consultants Cushman & Wakefield (C&W).

A total of 1.8 million square meters of new shopping center space was added to the European market in the mentioned period.

In Turkey, around 422,500 square meters of gross lettable area (GLA) were added, with the largest opening being the Vialand Theme Park.

The UK was in third spot with 182,600 square meters meanwhile, Poland and Germany were fourth and fifth respectively, together delivering 214,200 square meters of GLA.

“Emerging Central and Eastern European markets will continue to drive shopping center development activity. Notwithstanding the several new schemes added and others in the pipeline, countries such as Russia and Turkey will be far from saturated on a per capita basis and in fact still suffer from a shortage of quality space in some markets, highlighting the potential for further development growth in the short let alone the long term,” said Martin Mahmuti, Senior Analyst at Cushman & Wakefield.

Meanwhile, there were only 46 malls in Turkey in 2000, according to global real estate consultancy firm Jones Lang LaSalle, now there are over 300 shopping malls, much more than needed in the view of many sector representatives.