Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Erste real estate unit to kick off EUR 300 m project

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Erste real estate unit to kick off EUR 300 m project in JV with Alexander Finster

IMMORENT, the real estate leasing unit of Erste Bank AG, and Austrian property developer Alexander Finster are planning to jointly build 20 shopping malls in Hungary in the next two years. The estimated cost of the project is EUR 300 million.

To carry out the development, IMMORENT has brought to life a joint venture (50-50%) with Alexander Finster who has helmed similar projects successfully in Eastern Europe. Finster's key task will be to acquire properties and locate occupants, while IMMORENT will be responsible for financing and the management of the projects within the given timeframe.

The malls, which will be built in 2007-2008, will host food, clothing and electronics stores and sports good retailers.

Alexander Finster is the majority owner of Lukale Investment und Development, a company involved in a project to build a vast casino and other entertainment facilities in Bezenye, a Hungarian town of 1,650 people at the Hungarian-Slovakian-Austrian border.*

The malls are to be built at highly-frequented locations, IMMORENT's CEE Project Director Michael Hamann said. He added they had plans to carry on with the JV in other countries in CEE as well.

While the concession agreement has entered into force last October, roulette wheels are unlikely to be spun in Bezenye before 2010. In the first phase of the construction they will spend USD 550 m (HUF 110 bn) on the construction of a hotel, a casino, a bath, a conference centre and a restaurant. Eurovegas Hungary is set to start the project in April 2008 on a 240-hectare plot and wind up the first phase by H2 2010. The complex will initially give work to 1,500 people and to three to four thousand when it is completed. Bezenye mayor Robert Kammerhofer told news portal index.hu Lukale Zrt. has come and gone, we don't even know where it is. The concession tender the Finance Ministry invited in early 2006 for a complex of five casinos had a single bidder, Eurovegas (then called Venetian) that, understandably, won the tender. The Venetian Group runs two casinos in Las Vegas, the Venetian and the Palazzo.

Source: Portfolio.hu

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