Danish furniture retailer JYSK has leased 1,200 sqm and will open a new store in Colosseum Retail Park on April 10 this year, according to JLL, the leasing agent of the project.

Colosseum Retail Park, developed by Nova Imobiliare, has been open since 2011 and currently hosts a Carrefour unit, Romania’s only Leroy Merlin do-it-yourself shop and an Altex unit, all on some 37,500 sqm in the North – Western part of Bucharest.

The developers are currently working on delivering a further 15,000 sqm of retail space, and are are currently in advanced negotiations with other retailers for the leasing of the last remaining big box unit of 2.200 sqm and for preleases of the next phase of the retail park.

Earlier this year, Jysk representatives revealed plans to expand to 100 stores in Romania on the medium term, from the existing 14 units.

Within the group, 120 new stores will be open this year, but there is no fixed number of openings scheduled for Romania. However on the medium term, JYSK Nordic plans to have 100 stores in Romania and 35 in Bulgaria. In Romania, it runs shops in Bucharest – one unit within the Militari Shopping center, and in several regional cities, including Suceava, Constanta, Pitesti, Braila, among others.

JYSK, founded in 1979 and owned by Danish entrepreneur Lars Larsen, has 2,100 shops in 36 countries, where it has 18,500 employees. In the 2012/2013 financial year, it posted sales of EUR 2.5 billion.

Lars Larsen is also the owner of the furniture retail chains Bolia.com, IDEmøbler and ILVA – as well as of a number of other companies. The turnover of Lars Larsen Group is of EUR 2.9 billion.

editor@romania-insider.com