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March 2009 will be the month for opening according to Roger Schiltz. The man in charge, from the company Sans Frontieres, the company that will manage Ria Shopping, said that the date had already been fixed but for the moment he would prefer to keep it a secret. An investment worth 30 million euros has transformed the old Estádio Padinha belonging to Sporting Clube Olhanense into a building with 80 shops and it could provide some 1200 jobs of which 700 will be direct.

Following the commercial presentation of Ria Shopping last Friday, Francisco Leal said that the Shopping Centre was important because of the economic and commercial dynamism it would create but also because of the number of jobs. He added that he wasn’t saying that the 700 jobs envisaged by the project would be created straight away, but it would certainly create between 400 and 500 direct jobs, which they thought was very good.

The centre is divided into an area of services on Floor 0, with 19 shops; fashion on Floor 1, with 35 shops; food and leisure on Floor 2, with 25 shops and there will be more than 1,000 parking spaces.

The presence of the main anchor shops is already guaranteed, such as the supermarket Pão de Açúcar (of the Auchan group ), Box, Sport Zone, the shoe shop Loop, Book.It, Zippy and Worten Mobile. A pharmacy, hairdressers and a gymnasium are some of the other businesses that will be found there.

The 80 shops occupy a total area of 9084 m2.

Compensation included covering the shopping street

Covering the shopping street in the middle of Olhaõ is one of the things that was negotiated with the municipality as compensation for the construction of Ria Shopping. Along with this there are also advantageous conditions for Olhaõ shopkeepers who wish to set up shop in the shopping centre, and a billboard will be put up at all the entry points to the city to promote local shops and events in the municipality.

As far as covering the shopping street is concerned, a technical proposal is already being studied by the local authority and by ACRAL (The Algarve Regional Shopkeepers Association) so as not to affect residents.

Advantages for people of Olhão and ACRAL members

Sans Frontieres has provided a number of advantages for Olhão shopkeepers and for ACRAL members who wish to start businesses at Ria Shopping, but, despite this agreement, everything will depend on the negotiating capacity of each business.

Roger Schiltz, said that their agreement with the Council was to create special conditions so that the shops in Olhão could work with them, and he added that they also planned to provide support for shopkeepers so that they learned to work in a closed space such as a shopping centre.

He said that someone who ran a shop on a street had no idea of the problems and advantages of working in a shopping centre.

At the moment, the percentage of shops that have been rented out is about 60 – 65 %, which, according to Schlitz is enough to open the facility.

Not frightened by the competition

The proximity of Fórum Algarve in Faro and Gran Plaza in Tavira, which is planned to open in May 2009, does not scare the managers of Ria Shopping.

Roger Schiltz said that competition was normal and natural.

He said that what they could do was choose a good location (and they thought they had the best possible location), choose the right size of shopping centre, and then select the shops and create as cheap a shopping centre as possible, so that shopkeepers could pay the charges, that was their responsibility, the rest was “life”!

Schiltz said that the shopping centre that was soon to open would not be the same in a year’s time, and for him the secret lies in “flexibility” and the capacity to adapt the centre to the real demands of the market.

The promoters hope to reach a population of some 80,000 people. Mário Fernandes of Sans Frontieres said that the centre was designed for a local population of about 25,000 townspeople, and within a radius of about 25 minutes by car, they could reach some 70 to 80,000 people.

Olhanense gets 2,000 square metres

The sale of the old Estádio Padinha, the property of Sporting Clube Olhanense included a clause in the contract which stated that the club would benefit from the rental of about 2,000 m2 of shops, despite the fact that the management of the centre is entirely the responsibility of Sans Frontieres. The amount they will receive, however, has not yet been defined.

Mário Fernandes concluded by saying that this would depend on the average rental.

source: http://www.algarveobserver.com