Retail space boom keeps rippling

Vilnius will add about 100,000 square meters of retail space in the next three years, including 60,000 square meters next year, to accomodate the retail sales boom, according to the real estate firm Ober Haus.

The milestone in 2002 for Vilniaus Prekyba, Lithuania's largest hypermarket developer and operator, was the opening of Akropolis, the largest shopping centre in the Baltic states. Akropolis has over 55,000 square metres of retail space and features VP's own Maxima hypermarket on 17,000 square metres and several other domestic and foreign retailers. In the next year Akropolis will increase retail space by 70,000 square metres.

Another development project is the renovation of the Soviet-built department store in central Vilnius. It was privatized eight years ago by a group which included former managers of the department stores.

The developers plan to renovate the store next year and increase it to 18,000 square metres, making it the largest centrally located shopping center in Vilnius. So far there has been no information released about an anchor tenant.