The ParkLake shopping center in eastern Bucharest, which is now under construction, has tenants for 80% of its 70,000 sqm area, a year before its opening.

“The leasing process has been making significant progress, even if we still have one year until we open,” said David Sharkey, CEO of Irish real estate developer Caelum Development, one of the mall’s owners. The other investor is Portuguese real estate developer Sonae Sierra.

They will invest about EUR 180 million in the mall, which is located on the site of a former sports center, in the Titan park area. The shopping center will have a gross leasable area of 70,000 sqm and will include 200 stores, 23 restaurants, a cinema and 2,600 underground parking spaces.

Fashion retailers H&M and Inditex have leased 8,700 sqm in the new mall for their brands. ParkLake will also have a Carrefour hypermarket.

The mall should open next spring, said Ingo Nissen, managing director at Sonae Sierra, responsible for project development in Romania. He added that the construction work is making fast progress.

“We are proud that during the various phases of the construction we will have 500 to 2,000 workers on site. The mall’s opening will create some 2,000 new jobs,” Nisses said.

The Titan area, where ParkLake is being built, ranks third in Europe for the density of people per square kilometer, with 30,000, surpassed only by Moscow and Barcelona, Nissen added.

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editor@romania-insider.com