​When I stopped going to the mall due to pandemic restrictions, I stopped trying on clothes, I forgot about popcorn at the movie theater, and I didn’t even eat out. As a result, retail sales fell. With one exception: in settlements where there were no shopping centers, but there was a retail park, people continued to shop. They could enter the shops directly from the street, like Mega.

If in “normal” times shopping malls were real ants and factories of earnings, then during the pandemic projects that were still on paper were postponed. Instead, the retail parks segment has gained momentum precisely because they have weathered the tough times better.

Thus, what seemed like a coincidence quickly turned into a trend. Building a retail park in small towns is easier, cheaper and takes less time than a shopping center. And the desire of retailers to expand is reinforced precisely by the presence of these shopping centers.

In addition, retailers and developers pay attention to an important indicator: the development of the gross domestic product (GDP), which in our country registers one of the highest increases in the European Union, according to the estimates of the European Commission. Only Ireland and Malta are ahead of us.

“We see the reconfiguration of the market and the reorientation of developers to smaller retail projects, which have proven successful, from two points of view: investments in small and medium-sized cities from the retail side are profitable, given the lack of competition and the growth of purchasing power; at the same time, the investment cost is much lower than in a shopping center,” says Carmen Ravon, head of retail in Central and Eastern Europe at real estate consultancy CBRE.

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