Ozols: new retail life at site of former Azur Centre in Riga

On Thursday, 25 July, KS Holding is opening the first phase of the new concept destination store OZOLS starting with the RIMI Hypermarket. The anchor stores will be the Latvian flagship store of DIY retailer K-Senukai and the country’s leading food operator RIMI Hypermarket. The new center is designed and built by replacing the former Galerija Azur, providing a total leasable area of 27,100 square meters. The opening of the centre is run into two stages.

Rimi hypermarket is the first store that opens at Ozols and soon after followed by a pharmacy, a Hesburger Drive-in Café and other stores selling everyday products and services at the part of the building of the first phase reconstruction. For customers'; convenience there is a free-of-charge parking lot currently for 250 and in total for 750 cars provided. Two charging stations for electric cars will be installed, rising to four units later, as demand grows. Near the entrance zones the special stands for bicycle parking are available.

From autumn this year, OZOLS will house the most advanced K-Senukai store as it will be the first of the new concept in the Baltic States. The flagship will not only be the largest of its kind with more than 20,000 square meters but will provide a wide array of specialized services and product categories for both private and professional customers. It will also cater to the customers of newly merged K-Senukai and 1A.LV e-commerce operations by providing a dedicated e-commerce pick-up and support zone, enabling customers to conveniently collect online-ordered goods in OZOLS. K-Senukai’s Latvian headquarters are to be based in 1,000 square meters of office space in the building.

The building designers have used the central feature of the site - the great oak growing in the middle of the new complex, and have reshaped the building into a functional, easily accessible and modern retail centre OZOLS. The name of the new destination centre on the one hand represents a direct meaning of oak tree, and on the other hand it speaks for itself as the new centre provides a number of essential benefits - great place for people to come and shop for convenience and grocery products, interior and design items to make their living environment in harmony with their needs.

“Functionality and quality offer for customers’ self-made choices in creating and building their individual living space are the values of the centre powered by the presence of the ancient oak,” says the Director of the Shopping Centre Ilze Brazeviča. “The shopping centre is conveniently located near the southern bypass and complements the retail offer by focussing on convenience, interior, do- it-yourself segments. The new destination centre is a novelty solution in the market as both DIY and hypermarket are located here in tandem. Customers coming to shop for DIY purposes are usually extremely busy with arrangement of their homes so their time constraints will be much saved by having an opportunity to shop for food and convenience products at the same location,” adds Ilze Brazeviča.

The owner of the shopping centre UAB “KS Holding” has invested €35 million into redeveloping the shopping centre along with the purchase of the property. The total area of the building is 29,500 square meters providing retail and office area. The shops are located on the ground level but the second floor is fully occupied by the office centre of K-Senukai.

KS Holding is jointly owned by the Finnish retailer Kesko, their Baltic partner Arturas Rakauskas and the private equity firm Zabolis Partners. It is building a 100 million Euro property portfolio in the Baltic States. Other than Ozols, assets include the K-Senukai store in Daugavpils, and development sites secured in Tallinn and Vilnius. The investment company is always on the lookout for new prospective sites to extend their portfolio of new K-Senukai and K-Rauta stores in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius.

Kesko Senukai is a leading DIY retail company in the Baltics. It operates over 140 own and franchise stores in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus as well as an e-commerce platforms Kesko Senukai Digital and 1A.