Neighborhood shopping center, otherwise referred to as a convenience shopping center, is a new category in the Polish market. Its characteristic features include: location - close to customers' homes, functional architectural solutions and a tenant mix suiting everyday shopping needs of residents of housing estates in the surrounding neighborhood.
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Skorosze Centre
The Skorosze Centre is the first facility of its kind in Poland. IIC Group, belonging to the Israeli concern Giron Development & Building Ltd, is the investor and developer of the scheme. Management of the Centre has been entrusted to the CEFIC company (belonging to Simon Ivanhoe).
The Skorosze Centre occupies a total floor space of 13 196 m2 and has 12 000 m2 of retail space. Towards the end of 2008, as part of the next phase of the development (so-called phase B), the centre will be expanded by another 8000 m². The Centre is adjacent to Leroy Merlin giga-market (the biggest in Poland, occupying a floor space of 20 000 m²), which was opened in May 2003. This experimental Leroy Merlin huge project has proved to be a major success.
The Skorosze Centre is situated in Ursus, on Jerozolimskie Avenue, between the future A2 Motorway and modernised Nowa Lazurowa Street. This location guarantees convenient access both from downtown Warsaw and from satellite towns (Piastów, Pruszków, etc.), but also from Bemowo and Okęcie districts via Ryżowa Street.
The center's catchment area covers developing residential districts of the capital city - Ursus and Włochy - and suburban towns: Pruszków, Piastów and Brwinów, Michałowice. More than 200,000 people live within the catchment area (within a 10 minute drive). The Skorosze Centre has been built in the heart of one of the fastest developing housing estates in Warsaw that, according to forecasts, will have around 25 000 residents next year.
The investor, IIC Group, has secured permits to build 1,000 apartments in the immediate vicinity of the center and a 55,000 m² usable area of an office park fronting Jerozolimskie Avenue adjacent to the center.
The investor, IIC Group, has invested in development of the sewage system as well as the road infrastructure in the neighbourhood of the Skorosze Centre. Due to the investments, which been realized a few years before the centre was constructed, the neighbourhood has had a chance to develop, and the investment itself connected several housing developments as well.
"Investment in sewage and road infrastructure has been a major factor and catalyst to the development of nearby housing estates whose residents will now become the customers of the Skorosze Centre" - says Yossi Cohen, the CEO of IIC Group.
The stretch of Jerozolimskie Avenue adjacent to the centre has already been modernized by IIC Group, with a new junction (nine lanes and traffic lights) being built. The investment ensures convenient and safe entrance and exit from the car park near the Centre and from neighbouring housing estates. Access to the Skorosze Centre and the adjacent residential areas is also facilitated by internal roads built by the investor (including an access road from Ryżowa Street).
Architects working on the design of the shopping cent
