Constanţa still attractive to retail giants: Zara, C&A and New Yorker sign with Maritimo

Constanţa, Romania's most visited city, with around 500,000 tourists each year, is still attracting international apparel retailers in the malls under construction, with giants Inditex (Zara and another 5 stores), C&A and New Yorker having sealed contracts to rent spaces of 7,500 square metres in Maritimo mall, which is under construction.

The three retailers are among Europe's biggest players on this market, with over 7,000 stores overall, of which 80 are located in Romania. Besides these companies, Cinema City cinema hall operator also rented a space to open an eight hall-cinema due to be completed this autumn, according to Austria's Immofinanz investment fund, owner of the project.

However, the main anchor of Maritimo Constanţa will be Auchan hypermarket, set to open a 16,000-sqm store, thus taking up almost one third or the project's 50,000-square metre lettable area, an investment of around 140m euros, according to the latest estimates.

Constanţa is a city already covered by shopping centres, with City Park, TOM, Tomis and two shopping galleries in Real hypermarkets as the biggest such investments completed. The fact that these projects have sales above the average of other shopping centres in the county makes retailers further expand on this market.