"The aggregate value of the investment involving several different investors is estimated at €150m," said Marcus Wild, CEO of SES Spar European Shopping Centers, which will manage and own the new and most modern shopping center in Slovenia, at the press conference devoted to the presentation of the continuation of the project of construction of the new shopping center in Šiška. This will grow in Šiška, the most densely populated district of Ljubljana, by the autumn of 2019. The construction work is already starting in June 2017.
"We see Slovenia as a very perspective market; after all, we already manage four shopping centers here and are closely familiar with the shopping habits of Slovenian customers. The new center will bring Ljubljana an excellent supplement to the existing shopping environment in the broader city center area," stressed the CEO of SES, which is considered the market leader in the field of construction, development and management of shopping centers in Slovenia and neighbouring Austria, currently managing as many as 30 shopping centers in six countries of Central, Southern and Eastern Europe.
After years of complications involved in obtaining building permits, Toni Pugelj, manager of the Šiška project, also expressed his satisfaction with the launch of construction works. "We waited for the building permit for more than five and a half years, precisely for as many as 1954 days. The application for a building permit had to be supplemented by 216 different documents," was a brief Pugelj's summary of the lengthy process of obtaining a final building permit. He added that the structure would be constructed by 1000 to 1500 people, while its opening would bring about 700 new jobs. The construction of the transport and municipal infrastructure will begin in the following months, while the works on the structure will be carried out in the last quarter of this year.
The importance of the location of the new shopping center in Šiška was also pointed out by Igor Mervic, Director-General of Spar Slovenia, which is the major tenant of the Šiška shopping center: "The location is one of the best and very important to us for several reasons, both in terms of transport connections and because of the population density in the area. The shopping center will attract customers from a broader gravitational area, too", announced Mervic.
