The flagship Zara store on Lisbon’s Rua August in the city’s downtown Baixa has been sold for €20 million — a record price tag for the shopping area.
The building had been owned by the German fund Deka Immobilien which has been leasing it to the Spanish clothing retail giant Zara – it is the clothing chain’s flagship store in Lisbon.
The acquisition is the largest sale of its kind in the downtown Baixa..
The store covers four floors and links the lower Baixa with Baixa-Chiado on a parallel street positioned much higher than the lower Rua Augusta street level.
The building was sold to NEXT FCR according to the newspaper ECO in what was the “most expensive transaction for a high street retail store in Portugal”.
Covering an area of 2,500m2, with three façades: one onto Rua Augusta and the other on Rua Vítoria and Rua dos Sapateiros, the store catches probably the heaviest footfall of tourists and local shoppers in the city.
The building had belonged to the German group since 2018 when the fund acquired a series of 16 shops belonging to Inditex (Zara, Massimo Dutti and others) on the Iberian Peninsula. At that time the portfolio sold for €400 million.
Zara will occupy a new building in the downtown city square Rossio where stores are currently being refurbished to lease out to some of the most important retail brands in the world.
Source: Essential Business