Sonae Sierra and Caelum Development to spend €700m for a commercial centre in Eastern Bucharest

British-Portuguese company Sonae Sierra and real estate company Caelum Development will construct the Parklake Plaza commercial center in Bucharest, following a 700 million euro investment, according to the companies' representatives.

The commercial center will be located in Eastern Bucharest and should be ready in April 2011. It will be five storeys high and will have 110,000 square meters to be rented. It will include 443 stores and 3,300 parking places.

Parklake Plaza will include a hypermarket Cora, a Cinema City multiplex with 14 cinema halls, as well as stores belonging to local and international brands, said Caelum Development's executive manager, David Sharkey.

Sonae Sierra broke into the Romanian market purchasing the River Plaza Mall commercial center in Ramnicu-Valcea, Southern Romania, for 42 million euros. The company is also constructing two commercial centers in Craiova and Ploiesti, Southern Romania, which will be ready in 2009 and 2010, following 293 million euros investment.

Sonae Sierra owns 47 commercial centers in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Greece and Brazil. Spain's biggest shopping-center developer Sonae-SGPS and Grosvenor Group Ltd., a real estate company owned by the Duke of Westminster, are the two shareholders of Sonae Sierra.

Caelum Development is a private company with Irish shareholders which broke into the Romanian market in September 2006. Its main target is real estate markets in Central and Eastern Europe. The company mainly focuses on commercial spaces and office buildings. It currently counts 46 centers in Poland, Hungary, Germany and Romania.