The old Belgrade Plaza on Visnjicka St., next to the Danube River, becomes modern, western style shopping and entertainment center. The Plaza has 32,000 square meters of space, and the new renovation of the area is expected to contain about 110 retail units, as well as a supermarket and a multi-screen cinema complex.
Plaza Centers hopes to attract retailers and other businesses from local, as well as international brands that will entertain and delight both residents and visitors. The project part of the Plaza’s plan to develop shopping centers in capital and regional towns, chiefly in Central and Eastern Europe. They have already received a building permit giving them permission to begin the Belgrade project, and are now in the ending stages of acquiring bank financing. Construction on the project is projected to start by the end of this year, with a targeted finish date for the first part of 2017.
Together with the Belgrade project, Plaza expects to get approval for a building permit for development of the Timisoara Plaza in Romania in the next few weeks. Financing from the bank has already been approved, with coverage for 65 percent of the cost of the project, with construction planned to start by the end of this year if things go well and the building permit is approved.
According to Ran Shtarkman, President and CEO of Plaza Centers N.V., the Belgrade Plaza project is an example of one of their premiere development ventures and will provide the city with a more modern shopping and entertainment complex right in the center of old town. He went on to say that it would help supply needed retail space in an undersupplied area.
Additionally, Plaza Centers is in the final stages of getting financing from the bank and are excited to have a chance to reproduce the success they had previously when the Serbian Plaza’s Kragujevac Mall opened up in 2012 and was purchased by investors in 2014.
Other projects doing well currently are the Timisoara in Romania and several others in the Plaza’s strategic planning ventures.
Belgrade is Serbia’s capital, as well as its biggest city with more than two million residents that represent about 40 percent of the country’s commercial activity. Additionally, Belgrade has grown exponentially as a wealthier area and is becoming a very popular tourist destination.
