WHAT IS believed to be the largest mixed-use town centre built overseas by an Irish company – the €450 million Eurovea centre in Bratislava – was formally launched last weekend by Seán Mulryan’s Ballymore group.
The centrepiece of the scheme is a high quality shopping centre with 142 shops, including anchor tenants Marks & Spencer, Next, Debenhams and H&M, and 30 restaurants and bars.
The development in Slovakia also includes 235 apartments with uninterrupted views over the River Danube, 24,500sq m (263,716sq ft) of offices, a riverside park extending to 2 hectares, a five-star 209-bedroom Sheraton hotel, a nine-screen multiplex cinema, and more than 1,700 underground car-parking spaces.
Ballymore assembled an international team of architects to design what is already proving a vibrant new urban centre for half a million residents.
An estimated 100,000 people were at the newly completed complex on Saturday for the official opening attended by city dignitaries.
The centre is about half an hour’s drive from Vienna.
Around 90 per cent of the retail space is already occupied by a variety of international and local traders, including Peek Cloppenburg, Hennes & Mauritz, New Yorker, Billa, Koton, Reserved, Nike, Etam and Penny Black.
Around 60 per cent of the apartments have already been sold and a marketing campaign is about to get under way to find tenants for the office complex.
Planning permission is now to be sought for a second phase of the scheme which will largely be composed of apartments.
Ballymore is heavily involved in a string of apartment developments, mainly in the docklands area of London.
