The newest Bulgarian shopping mall, “Serdika Center”, was formally opened in Sofia Tuesday.

Serdika Center is located on the Sitnyakovo Blvd. It has 210 stores with a commercial space of over 51 000 square meters on three levels, and office space of some 30 000 square meters.

Only three of the 210 stores remain unoccupied at the time of the opening, announced ECE Project Management, the company running the complex. Some of the stores, however, will start operating only in April 2010.

Over 60% of the commercial space has been rented by fashion brands. Several brands including Zara and Peek&Cloppenburg, as well as the Austrian shoe producer Humanic, enter the Bulgarian market for the first time with their stores in the Serdika Mall. New Yorker and Deichmann are opening their first stores in Sofia in the newest shopping mall.

The management of Serdika Center is going to attract visitors by organizing special events – not unlike the other 114 malls ran by ECE Project Management. The commercial and office center is going to have 1 600 parking spots and unlike most large shopping malls in Bulgaria, will not feature a movie theater.

The Serdika Center project was started in 2006 with the Austrian company Sparkassen Immobilien as the main investor. The office part of the mall with an area of 30 000 square meters will be opened in the summer of 2010. Sparkassen Immobilien have three more projects for shopping centers in Bulgaria located in Sofia, Varna, and Plovdiv.

Serdika Center is the second large commercial center to have been opened in Sofia since the beginning of 2010 after the Sofia Outlet Center located on the Tsarigradsko Shose Blvd.

In April, 2010, one more shopping center will be opened – The Mall. It is also located on the Tsarigradsko Shose Blvd and will host the first Carrefour store in Sofia.