PGGM Private Real Estate and Redevco have launched Urban Retail Ventures, a European joint venture worth €550 million ($680 million).
Urban Retail Ventures will invest in the most attractive shopping and leisure destinations in Europe, with the emphasis on cities that want to profile themselves as high-quality shopping locations.
The basis of the joint venture is the acquisition of Promenade Sainte-Catherine, a large-scale urban plan in the center of Bordeaux.
The strategy of Urban Retail Ventures is based on the strong conviction that the most successful retail locations in the future will be locations that meet the changing consumer demand. A growing number of consumers want more to enjoy a day of shopping instead of just being focused on buying things. The selection of dynamic and economically thriving hotspots, with a mix of retail, food, drink and leisure time, is based on Redevco’s research model “City Attractiveness”.
The City Attractiveness model helps identify success factors in commercial real estate and thereby contributes to making the right investment decisions. The model ranks 825 European cities in 25 countries and weighs so-called “soft factors” that provide the “social buzz” of a location, in addition to traditional factors such as the local economy and population composition.
Urban Retail Ventures is fully committed to reducing the CO2 emissions within the portfolio to zero in 2030.
Urban Retail Ventures is part of the investment strategy of PGGM Private Real Estate to set up strategic partnerships and build platforms with prominent property managers who have proven expertise in specific local markets. For Redevco, this is the third European joint venture in retail real estate that the company has entered into. Previous collaborations were with the British institutional investor Hermes and the U.S. investment company ARES. Redevco will be responsible for the asset management of Urban Retail Ventures.
