Plaza Center to lease 10 shopping

Mumbai, Sep 15: European Shopping major Plaza Centers on Monday, Sep 15 announced that leasing of its ten shopping and leisure centres, including three housing projects, would commence from the middle of next year. The projects to be taken up at a cost of Rs 15,000 crore would see an investment of Rs 9,500 crore from Plaza Centers, of the Israel-based ELBIT Imaging Group.

Talking to newsmen, Mr Abraham Goren head of Elbit's group activities in India and Asia and Plaza Centers' Chief Executive officer Ran Shtarkman said the first of the project would go on stream by the second half of 2010 in Pune and the last phase of a 4,000 unit integrated township in Bangalore would be completed by 2016.

Besides Bangalore similar integrated townships were being planned in Chennai and Kochi, Mr Goren said, adding that the Group had no intentions immediately to move into realty markets in Mumbai and New Delhi.

Besides Bangalore, Chennai, Kochi and Pune, Plaza Centers would come up in Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram, he said.

Last year the Plaza Centers had announced an investment of Rs 5,000 crore at the India Retail Forum. The investment, including contribution from local developers had now scaled up to Rs 15,000 crore for a total built up area of 80 million sq ft and the investment figures could move upwards over the next few years, Mr Goren added.

He said the shopping and Leisure centres, which could also have hotels and service apartments, would redefine the mall culture in the country. Mr Goren said in the next nine to ten years, the number of projects to come up in the country would touch 50.

He said Plaza Centers already had 26 properties across Europe and East European countries and another 29 were in pipeline.

Replying to a question he said that there was huge potential for shopping complexes in India with a potential 300 million middle income group population, whose purchasing capacity was much more than 25 euros of percapita income in East European countries.

UNI