The open real estate fund Investika has purchased the Galerie Butovice shopping centre located in the popular office area Nove Butovice in Prague.
The asset is the sixth largest shopping centre in Prague with more than eighty tenants and an almost hundred-per-cent occupancy rate.
The centre has been reconstructed in 2016 and 2017. The property offers over 50,000m² spread over two floors, including a parking facility for 1,400 vehicles. Current tenants include Kika, Albert, H&M and Electro World.
The property enjoys close proximity to a dynamically growing residential and office area and is easily accessible by private and public transport. The company was advised by CBRE. The purchase price was not disclosed.
“We are pleased to represent Investika in their first retail acquisition - Galerie Butovice in Prague. The shopping centre has been recently modernized both outside and inside. With the newly opened three-floor Kika shop, it’s the sixth largest shopping centre in Prague. Both initiatives have improved the performance of other retailers, too. The Galerie Butovice with its 50,000 sq m of modern retail space represents a significant step forward for the fund, illustrating a growing strength of the local capital and its ability to complete a relatively big transaction,” said Vítezslav Dolezal, Associate Director Investment Properties at CBRE.
“Acquiring the Galerie Butovice shopping centre meets the fund’s status requirements and proves our focus on premium assets with a stable long-term income. It’s the fund’s first retail-only acquisition, being at the same time its biggest property. This significantly improves our sector diversification where the office sector had a majority up to now. The demand for spaces in shopping centres remains high.
“Moreover, Czechia doesn’t foresee any substantial development in shopping centres. Thanks to being close to big office centres, Galerie Butovice offers its services to some twenty thousand office workers in the vicinity, and the ten-minute-drive area includes about two hundred thousand potential customers,” said Vaclav Kovar, MRICS, the fund’s portfolio manager and a member of the board.
RPA Perspective The Czech Republic retail market may not be as large as Poland, but it continues to strengthen. For example, Primark’s new Warsaw store follows the opening in June of its first CEE store in Ljubljana, Slovenia. In addition, the company has announced plans to open in Czech Republic, with Prague also set to welcome a Time Out Market in 2021.
Meanwhile, CPI Property Group, the biggest owner of retail space in Czech Republic, reported a “record-breaking” start to 2019, marked by both project launches and the continuation of ambitious reconstruction schemes aimed at reviving premises and making the shopping experience more enjoyable for customers.
“Investments in our shopping centres will be once again be in the hundreds of millions of Czech crowns this year,” says Petr Brabec, CPI’s head of asset management, shopping centres. “The Spektrum centre in Prague is a very special case as it’s being pulled down to be replaced with a new, modern design [by architect Chapman Taylor].”
Poland also leads the CEE in another trend that is gathering in strength across the region — warehouse stock. In the first quarter of 2019, industrial and logistics space had already exceeded 16 million sq m, driven largely by the growth of the ecommerce sector. It is a development that is leading to a shift in investment focus.
