Cefic Polska has a new mall in Silesia

Arena Galeria Handlowa recently opened in the Silesian city of Gliwice. It is the first shopping center in the city and contains over 36,000 sqm of retail space. Carrefour and Leroy Merlin are the anchor tenants, along with 75 other shops and three restaurants.

To find out about its prospective customers' expectations, Cefic Polska, the mall's investor and management company, conducted research in conjunction with TNS OBOP which was then used in the designing and planning stages. The brands represented in the mall were also chosen according to the results of this research.

"Our observations showed constant movement of people within the Silesia region," said Paweł Goździnowski, the commercial director of Cefic Polska. "People who live in Katowice work in Gliwice or those who live in Bytom study, for example, at the [Silesian] University of Technology in Gliwice. This is why we decided on Arena's location - not in the city center but next to a main road."

The mall is near the former EUR 40 road and is connected to the city's bypass. It is close to a large residential development and has an estimated 706,844 people in its catchment area. Arena Galeria Handlowa has parking for 1,400 cars. According to the investor, the project cost zł.220 million.

By completing the Gliwice mall, Cefic Polska, owned by Simon Property Group and Ivanhoe Cambridge, has increased its management portfolio to 10 shopping malls. At the same time, Carrefour gained its 37th hypermarket in Poland.