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THE LATEST PLACEMAKING NEWS

Traversing the Jewish Town of Prague, and connecting Old Town Square with Čechův Bridge, shopping destination Pařížská Street is lined with stately townhouses whose façades combine historicist features with the decorative detail of Art Nouveau. The high street just recently welcomed five new luxury stores, and 2025 is expected to be a record year in this regard.

BALFIN Group is diving into the world of family entertainment with its latest venture, “HyperActive,” a massive gaming and entertainment hub in Kosovo. As part of its expansion strategy, the Group has acquired a 40% stake in the company, setting the stage for significant growth in the region and across Europe.

ECE Work & Live is developing a “Ruby” brand hotel in Copenhagen for the first time. This is also the Ruby Group’s first location in Denmark. The announcement follows the recent signing of a long-term lease agreement between ECE as project developer and Ruby Group as operator for the planned hotel building in the Frederiksberg district in the heart of Copenhagen.

Pop-up shops are more than just a trend; they are a valuable business opportunity and here to stay. Without having to commit to a long-term commercial lease, pop-up stores promote brands, concepts, services or products in a short period of time. Building on this idea, Storefront, a sharing-economy company, provides short-term retail spaces for rent to companies through an online platform, used specifically as pop-up retail locations.

Union Investment announced another leasing success in Essen, Germany: Sports specialist Intersport Voswinkel has secured around 2,000 sq m on the second floor of the Limbecker Platz shopping center for ten years.

Zalando has secured more than 90% of About You’s share capital excluding treasury shares and intends to carry out a squeeze-out of About You’s minority shareholders.

2024 was another year of solid growth for FREY with a profit from recurring operations going up by 28,1 percent and a sales growth of almost 29 percent to 191.3 million Euros. The growth of the specialist in open-air shopping centers has made this impressive growth step especially since entering the outlet market with the acquisition of ROS Retail Outlet Shopping. An important part of the expansion strategy is the signing of Designer Outlet Center in Berlin for 230 million Euros.

The struggling textile discounter NKD could soon be sold, affecting its international store network of around 2000+ stores around Europe, with more than half being located in Germany only.

“Westfield Hamburg-Überseequartier could emerge as a refreshing beacon of culinary innovation and diversity”, states Will Odwarka, F&B-expert, founder and CEO of Heartatwork Hospitality Consulting and member of the ACROSS Advisory Board. He takes a close look at the recently announced differentiation of the F&B offering at Hamburg’s new shopping destination. With this diverse concept he is positive that Hamburg will be able to show the power of food to cultivate community spirit.

Regio Data’s annual retail chain expansion analysis brings Austria as an example, revealing that store networks are hardly growing any more, with retreat and consolidation dominating instead. Of the 732 retail chains from 24 sectors analyzed, many are putting on the brakes, and this trend is largely prevalent across the whole of Europe. However, there are also companies that are keen to expand. Online retailers and non-food discounters are squeezing out specialized retailers – with noticeable consequences for the retail landscape.

This year’s EuroCIS focused on artificial intelligence, seamless check-out, and smart technologies. The presented solutions impressively showed how the retail industry will be positioned in the future. Generative AI enables more efficient processes, while automated checkout systems and digital shopping carts transform the shopping experience. Here, we present the most exciting approaches.

The Prada Group reports another year of remarkable results and solid progress, as high brand desirability and disciplined execution drove a positive trajectory on both revenue and margins. The Group’s net revenues grew by 17% to 5.4 billion euros at constant exchange rates compared to 2023, a well above-market performance marking four consecutive years of double-digit, like-for-like growth.

The renovation and modernization process at the KING CROSS Zagreb shopping center has reached a significant stage of development: on 27 February, the part of the mall that has been completely renovated and modernized in recent months while business operations continued reopened.

As the potential for retailers to generate footfall themselves is becoming more limited, shopping centers in Germany need to closely examine their own management strategies, and their approach to repositioning, revealed an expert panel at the joint press conference “Outlook Retail Real Estate 2025”, as they examined the German commercial real estate market’s current challenges and opportunities.