The sale of the first shopping mall in Bulgaria, Sofia City Center, will be officially sealed with a ceremony on December 9 2008, one month after it was first announced.
Sofias chief architect Petar Dikov told Stroitelstvo.bg that in August 2008 a plan was approved for a glass tower to be built behind the Sofia central train station, at a location commonly knows as the artery. Spanish company Riofisa has a parcel of land worth 40 million euro, and is contemplating erecting a glass tower with an auxiliary complex around it, creating 2500 new jobs and significantly boosting the local economy in the district.
BritishBulgarian investment company ZBS, which is working on its first openair mall in Bulgaria in the city of Bourgas, is considering investments of a total 200 million euro in Bulgaria, according to managing director David Coward, quoted by website investor.bg.Such projects will be build in the regional urban centres where there is still not a lot of competition. Bourgas, Haskovo and Pazardjik are some of the town where the company is aiming to invest heavily.
Greek company Eurobank Properties, which won a tender to build Sofias first skyscraper, has ultimately backed down from the deal. The company has decided, in light of the global financial crisis, not to go ahead with the project. The contemplated tower was going to rise on Todor Aleksandrov Boulevard in Sofia.An official statement from the company said that the decision was ultimately caused by the current economic climate, the financial crunch and the negative economic forecast for Bulgaria, as quoted by the Bulgarian newspaper the Trud daily.
Property deals in the Bulgarian capital slumped by 18 yearonyear in the third quarter of the year compared to a year ago, showed data of the Registry Agency. The downtrend began in the second quarter but the 13 yearonyear rise in the first stemmed the slide to some 4 yearonyear for the nine months.