Cyprus Mall, the largest shopping centre in Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, has been undergoing a revamp and expansion for the past two years. Asset manager Vlad Valcea gave us a sneak peek behind the curtain.

Atterbury Cyprus has added about 6 000sqm of shops… tell us a bit about the process of finding the tenants for the new section. Was there a lot of demand? How many actual individual shops were added?
Since the extension was announced to the market in 2017, there was an oversubscription of tenants wishing to enter the Mall of Cyprus, which is the dominant and best-performing shopping mall on the island. A total of 32 new units were created through the expansion, out of which six new food concepts will be included in the newly built food court.

Is there a plan should there be yet more demand for shops from prospective tenants? Can the mall be expanded any further?
Unfortunately, further expansion is not possible, due to the limits imposed by the urban planning coefficients. Nonetheless, we are excited at the prospect of being able to accommodate new retailers in the nearest future in some of the units of building “Annex 4”, which is adjacent to the Mall of Cyprus and also forms part of the greater scheme called Emporium Park, owned by Atterbury Cyprus.

Tell us a bit about the asset-management team working on this project – how big is the team, how many of them are locals, and how many Atterbury people are involved?
It has been a proper team effort between me on the European asset-management side and the local property-management team at the mall level – Kypros Hadjistyllis, Andreas Florides, George Pissis and Antonia Constantinou, in turn supported by the South African asset-management team based in Pretoria and spearheaded by Lucille Louw and Heloise van Niekerk in the initial stage and Wessel Boshoff. In addition, there has been highly appreciated support from my teammates in the Leiden office in the Netherlands.

When will the first new shops start trading?  Is there a formal opening planned?
The expansion is due to open on 28 March. The formal event will be highly publicised nationwide.

Who are the anchor tenants?
We have Inditex Group (Zara, Massimo Dutti, plus five other brands), Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Forever 21, Intersport, K-Cineplex, Sklavenitis Supermarket, TGI Fridays and Ikea, the latter being a stand-alone building that is part of Emporium Park.

The mall was also being rearranged in terms of flow, with a new food court. What in your opinion is the biggest improvement overall that will have the most impact on shoppers’ experience?
From the start our mission was to create a meaningful synergy between retail, leisure and entertainment, in order to provide the right experiences to our customers. The new food court with its extended seating area, an outdoor veranda and six new food-and-beverage concepts is definitely the main highlight. Of course, the additional new stores created to accommodate new fashion brands and the additional 273 parking bays are equally important; just as the significantly increased kids’ entertainment area, the new locations indoors and outdoors for different types of events, and a renovated and technologically upgraded cinema will all play a critical role in the long-term success of the project. Overall, I am happy to say that this expansion has ultimately achieved its goal.

The mall was being redeveloped around tenants who kept trading. What was the biggest challenge here and did tempers ever flare and require soothing words?
You’re absolutely correct in pointing out that building or extending a mall while continuing to trade daily with a “business as usual” attitude has been extremely challenging for the mall-management team. Parking was the main issue, both in terms of access and availability, but it was a truly unavoidable consequence of the fact that we could only extend the mall by building additional floors on top of the existing outdoor parking and part of the underground parking too. Complaints from customers and tenants, combined with requests for rental discounts, happened as expected, but overall, I wish to thank and congratulate the development team (Pieter Olivier and Cobus van Heerden) for pulling through with a very tough project and for being very attentive and supportive in dealing with all the challenges faced by the mall-management team in their daily operations. I must underline that it was a true example of teamwork, complementary support and a solution-oriented approach during some rather “normal” edgy instances arising from a multitude of external factors that one is faced with during such an extension.

Do you foresee any unique asset-management challenges for the new-shape mall? And are you finding the process very different from other assets that you’ve been involved in managing?
I feel very comfortable with our improved project and I am 100% confident that it will remain the dominant mall in Cyprus, despite new competition that appeared in Nicosia recently, last November. Competition was expected anyway, and it will eventually create a healthy market, which in fact makes the asset-management process going forward extremely similar to my previous involvements.