No worries about online shopping

According to these experts, the rumoured death of large regional shopping centres has also been greatly exaggerated. The current relative affluence of consumers has certainly been benefiting the warehouse sector, boosted by the growth of online retail. In response, it is now increasingly developing specialised facilities that are better suited to tenants’ more diverse needs, they concluded.

How to keep the retail sector alive? – was the title of the panel on retail development, but the assumption it was based upon was immediately objected to by the panellists.

“The retail sector is not dying, it’s doing great, so it doesn’t need resuscitation,” retorted Agata Sekuła, the head of the CEE retail investment department at JLL and the discussion’s moderator, in her opening of the discussion.

“Shopping centres have long been not only for shopping, so the increase in the popularity of online retail and the ban on Sunday trading has had little effect on sales and footfall figures. The new situation, however, does require a new way of management,” insisted Anna Malcharek, the managing director of Gemini Holding.

The panellists also took issue with the notion that the sun would be setting at any time soon on the large shopping centre segment.

“Customers still like shopping in large centres, so they are happy to visit them. Regional centres are doing very well, just like the smallest ones, the local centres, strongly connected with the local community. Any decrease in sales would only threaten medium-sized facilities, especially those with a less defined profile – they will require some intensive asset management,” claimed Maciej Wróblewski, a deputy CEO and the head of development at Apsys.

“It’s more difficult to find buyers for an entire mixed-use centre because most investors still specialise in a particular asset class. Instead, a complex combining many facilities with various functions will attract the attention of more investors interested in one of its parts, whether this is retail, offices or a hotel. Such a profile widens the scope of the investment opportunities rather than limiting them,” argued Maciej Tuszyński, a senior partner and the head of the real estate finance department at Griffin Real Estate and Griffin Property Finance II.

Online shopping also featured strongly in another discussion panel, this time on the warehouse market. E-commerce is still driving the enormous demand for warehouse and logistics space and there is no indication that any other market segment could threaten its dominant role, believed the panellists of the discussion moderated by Bartłomiej Krzyżak, the head of the investment department at Avison Young.

“The day of the universal warehouse is now over, because the needs of tenants are increasingly diverse. New functions have been introduced to buildings, such as for the recent booming area of logistics for the return of purchased products – and this requires more expenditure during construction. Parcel sorting and refrigeration plants, which were only used by specialist logistics companies just a few years back, are also gaining in popularity,” pointed out Artur Mokrzycki, the Europe head of the capital markets department at Panattoni.

“But the problem is that there could be problems when it comes to finding another tenant for a highly specialised building when the current occupant decides to move out. Any investor considering purchasing such a building will wonder whether they will be able to quickly rent out the building again,” admitted Waldemar Grabka, the investment officer and asset manager for CEE countries at Exeter Property Group.

A full report of the investment conference will be published in the upcoming October issue of Eurobuild.

The experts on the retail panel, from the left: Agata Sekuła of JLL (moderator), Michał Ciapka of Higasa Properties, Anna Malcharek of Gemini Holding, Jolanta Wawrzyszuk of Atrium European Real Estate, Maciej Wróblewski of Apsysa, Piotr Szafarz od Dentons and Maciej Tuszyński of Griffin Real Estate & Griffin Property Finance II.