Shopping center still slow in getting started

The governor of the county of Kaunas has threatened to cancel a land lease agreement with Baltic Shopping Centers, a German-owned real estate developer, unless the company sets an exact date for the start of the construction of what is expected to be the largest shopping and leisure complex in the Baltic countries.
Under a 1997 agreement with the administration of Kaunas county and the municipality of Kaunas, Lithuania's second- biggest city, the construction was to begin back in mid-2000.
Speaking in a news conference on June 11, Kaunas county Governor Valentinas Kalinauskas said that although the German company had been paying lease fees and fines for delayed construction on time, county authorities could no longer keep strategic land undeveloped.
Axel Pfeifer, chairman of the board of Baltic Shopping Centers, which is a subsidiary of Dr. Werner Pfeifer Objekt-Entwick-lung GmbH, told reporters that the primary reason for the delay had been economic stagnation in Europe.
However, Baltic Shopping Centers now has a reliable partner and is ready to carry out the project, he added.
Speaking in June 2002, Uwe Griem, director of Baltic Shopping Centers, said that construction would begin by the end of the year.
The German investors have already spent around 20 million litas (5.8 million euros) to keep an office in Vilnius operating, as well as on construction plans and architectural design projects and payment of lease fees and fines.
The proposed shopping center, which was supposed to be the largest in the Baltics, will have 65,000 square meters of retail and entertainment space, including a multiplex cinema.
It is expected that 25,000 people will visit the complex daily.
To build it, the company has leased 260,000 square meters of property near the Vilnius-Kaunas-Klaipeda highway. It intends to invest up to 276 million litas in the project and create around 1,000 new jobs.