Despite the conditions of the war, the commercial real estate market did not stop its work. But the crisis conditions will continue to affect the performance of shopping centers. Thus, the weighted average vacancy rate in shopping centers in Kyiv continues to grow, and in March 2023 it almost doubled compared to the same period last year – from 11.5% to 21.5%. The further growth of free space especially affected SECs of the regional format, where the indicator was 30.9%, and the district shopping center with a vacancy of 19.2%. “Therefore, now more than ever, the effectiveness of the work of the shopping center depends primarily on the bilateral ability to negotiate: both on the part of the managing company and on the part of the retailers,” – notes the director of the UTG company Evgenia Loktionova.

In order to overcome the negative consequences of modern challenges, SECs are trying to attract non-standard tenants more actively (from administrative services centers (ASCs) to museums, as was recently done in Gulliver SEC). Thus, the spaces vacated after the departure of the tenants begin to be used as venues for conferences/events or even as museums. But, according to the manager, visitors to such formats are impulse buyers. Although they may become permanent customers of the shopping center in the future. “In this way, museums, ASCs and other non-standard formats play a significant advertising role, and also reduce vacancy. But such formats are unlikely to be able to gain a foothold in shopping centers, becoming flow generators. Such tenants can only temporarily solve the problem of vacant premises. This is due to the fact that they most often do not pay rent, do not generate a flow and are not commercial,” – Evgenia Loktionova notes.

At the same time, considering the prospects of educament in shopping centers of Ukraine against the background of a limited range of anchors, the expert emphasizes its prospects. Although he emphasizes that educament is a novelty for our country, therefore it requires significant resources to create significant marketing support. “But in the conditions of war, developers are not ready to invest significant sums in the development of new functions. Therefore, it is worth returning to this issue after our victory,” – she emphasizes.