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OUTSIDE INTEREST

With the Polish consumer’s appetite for consumer goods showing no signs of abating, the country is likely to remain a popular destination for foreign retail investors. Some recent developments involving non-Polish players:

• Ivanhoe Cambridge’s acquisition of a majority interest in the the Central European Retail Property Fund (CERPF). This makes the Canadian company a majority owner of Wola Park shopping center, a 786,000-square-foot regional mall in Warsaw. Ivanhoe Cambridge bought an additional 65.5 percent stake in CERPF, raising its interest to 91.5 percent.

• The city of Poznan’s approval of Spanish development firm Neinver’s plans to build Centrum Handlowe Komandoria, a 646,000-square-foot shopping center. As part of the project agreement, Neinver is to create one road and improve two others.

• The ground-breaking on Lublin Plaza, a 732,000-square-foot retail and leisure center in Lublin, by Israeli development firm Plaza Centers. The three-story, €55 million ($66 million) project will have an eight-screen cinema, an entertainment center, a conference center and an underground parking garage. Plaza Centers has already built 19 centers in Hungary and Poland.

• A search for sites by U.S. discount giant Wal-Mart. The chain is looking at Poland, Hungary and Russia for future expansion, H. Lee Scott Jr., Wal-Mart’s president and CEO, told London’s Financial Times. The central European expansion would come largely through acquisition, he said, given the consolidation among other retailers already in the market.