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Contents
- Starachowice
- Konin
- Tarnobrzeg
- Ełk
- Jaworzno
- Zgierz
- Wałbrzych - case study
- Tomaszów Lubelski - case study
Introduction
A neighbourhood centre is one which:
- is located in a large urban c
- entre or housing estate;
- provides its customers with basic food provision and services;
- has a limited number of fashion and footwear shops, electrical and household stores;
- target shoppers are inhabitants of the surrounded districts or office workers and pedestrians;
- has prolonged opening hours;
- has an excellent primary catchment and is easily accessible both by foot, car and public transport;
- typically does not exceed 12,000 m² of GLA;
- typical tenants include: supermarket, multimedia stores, speciality food like grocery, bakery and wine store; health and beauty stores, telecommunication, services such as hairdresser, laundry, banks, post office, news agent, travel agency and key cutter.
The Polish retail market and shopping patterns have gone through a rapid evolution over the past 15 years. In larger cities, increased car ownership and the arrival of hypermarkets (typically accompanied by a small shopping gallery) led towards weekly or even monthly shopping trips. These were followed by larger shopping centres and later centres incorporating leisure and entertainment.
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With 137 m² of modern retail space per 1,000 inhabitants the stock of shopping centres in Poland the country still has further potential compared to a Western Europe average of ca 200 m²/1,000.
Opportunities for development have become harder to find in the larger cites where stock levels are in excess of 700 m²/1,000 inhabitants on average. Furthermore, planning restrictions have become tighter with developments containing units greater than 2,000 m² requiring regional council (sejmik wojewódzki) approval and city level consent as opposed to city level consent only. For each application the local authorities has to undertake a study and take in to consideration the extent to which a proposed scheme would disturb local trade,the job market and the impact on infrastructure, etc. has to be undertaken.
With this in mind developers have increasingly focussed on building in smaller towns such as Wałbrzych and Ełk or neighbourhood centres in niche locations in the larger cities such as Warsaw and Wrocław. At the same time, increasingly busy lifestyles and the preference amongst Poles to buy groceries on a daily basis provides a ready market for such ‘convenience’ centres.
In preparing this market report we have attempted provide examples of towns suitable for small shopping or neighbourhood centres together with providing case studies on a number of such ongoing developments.
Towns have been selected according to local economic indicators, demographics, existence of large residential estates with no modern retail facilities, existing town level competition and planning status.
Poland: An opportunity for neighbourhood and small shopping centres? 2007/2008
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