Cromwell Property Group has put a Polish shopping centre portfolio up for sale with a price tag of more than €500 mln.
Cromwell has appointed CBRE and Eastdil Secured to find a buyer, according to the latest edition of EuroProperty.
The portfolio belongs to the Cromwell Polish Retail Fund (CPRF) and comprises eight properties totalling about 250,000 m2 in seven cities, including Warsaw, Kraków, Bydgoszcz and Wroclaw. The fund was formerly known as the Valad Polish Retail Fund.
Cromwell, headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, acquired investment manager Valad Europe in 2015. Valad had bought the fund from GE Capital Real Estate in February 2013. The assets were originally intended to be part of the Cromwell European REIT which listed on the Singapore stock exchange in November, but were taken out when the issue size was reduced.
Several assets, which include six first generation shopping centres and two hypermarkets, have recently been refurbished or extended, including Rondo Shopping Centre in Bydgoszcz. CPRF has also completed a €220 mln, 50,000 m project at Ursynow Shopping Centre.
Janki Shopping Centre (above), Warsaw, one of Poland’s first shopping centres having originally opened in 1999, is about to undergo a €65 mln extension, adding 21,000 m2 to its current 73,000 m2. Cromwell said in a statement this week that Janki’s extension is 95% let. The existing centre is anchored by an Auchan hypermarket and tenants include H&M, C&A and Go Sport. Occupiers lined up for the extension include KappAhl, New Yorker, Inditex group, Starbucks, Pizza Hut and Deichmann.
Cromwell refinanced the CPRF in April 2016 with a €133 mln facility from Helaba. That loan was secured against six shopping centres: Korona, Wroclaw; Tulipan, Lodz; Ster, Szczecin; Rondo, Bydgoszcz; Kings Cross Praga, Warsaw; and Kometa, Torun. The refinancing occurred a month after CPRF sold the 27,728 m2 Krokus shopping centre in Krakow where a joint scheme to expand the centre had been planned with Unibail Rodamco. The project was sold to developer Mayland which has subsequently sold it to Nepi Rockcastle.
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This article first appeared in EuroProperty, a PropertyEU weekly publication
