The first “shopping city” in Bulgaria to open in 2025

There is an upcoming expansion of Jumbo Plazza, which will take place in three stages and the ambition is to make that retail park the largest in the Balkans

16:16 09.11.2023 ~ 2 min read

The first outlet village in Bulgaria is about to be opened in Sofia in the near future. This is a shopping concept where different brand stores are positioned in one place shaped like a miniature shopping city.

The ambitious project will be implemented on the territory of Jumbo Plazza in 2025. The news was announced by Simona Parvanova, director of leasing and marketing at Trinity Capital, the company that owns the retail park.

Our ambition is for Jumbo Plazza to become the largest retail park in the Balkans. The expansion we are planning will take place in three stages and we will grow from 30,000 square meters to 85,000 square meters in 2025,” she said at this year's Balrec, a real estate conference.

During the first stage of the retail park expansion, new brands will set up shop at new physical stores on the territory of Jumbo Plazza. In the second stage, the so-called ‘outlet village’ format will be launched, and the final phase of the project includes the building of a new type of construction materials hypermarket, which will operate under a DIY concept.

We also have inquiries about the construction of a small hotel, plus we are thinking about an office buildings district. However, these are ideas that are still at the consideration stage," said Simona Parvanova.

Miniature shopping city

The "shopping city", which is about to spring up in Sofia, will consist of 50 premises - mainly fashion brands stores. There will also be a parking lot with 1,800 spaces. The project investment amount has not been disclosed.

In Europe, outlet villages have existed for 40 years now and there are over 200 such centres, with more than 4,000 brands housed in them," explained Simona Parvanova.

In fact, Trinity Capital decided to create the new project because of the demand for this type of shopping space by brands that had previous interest in becoming part of Jumbo Plazza. Parvanova did not want to specify the names of these brands or the retail market they operated.