Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2016 | Page 17

Photo: Ari Talusen

which will provide tremendous opportunities in this area,” Salo says, pointing out that
this Food Market concept encourages diversity: there’s room for both fast food and fine
dining here.
“Conceivably, the Mall of Tripla can
feature restaurants that are destinations in
their own right.”
Food Market will be complemented by
Mall of Tripla’s very own market hall, Market Zoo, which will be anchored on authenticity and original flavours.

Million Strong
Vice President Seppo Martikainen from YIT
agrees that the Mall of Tripla will be quite
special in its accessibility: You can easily
walk, bike or drive to Mall of Tripla. More
than 500,000 local residents can reach Tripla
in 10 minutes, and over a million people are
within a 30-minute reach.
“Every train in the metropolitan area
stops in Pasila – and now that new Ring
Rail Line was launched in summer 2015,
we can expect volumes to keep growing.
All of his bodes well for the Mall of Tripla,”
he sums up.

Tripla Alliance

(From left to right) Seppo Martikainen,
Vice President, Head of Transactions at
YIT and Tapio Salo, Senior Vice President, Tripla, YIT.

that Tripla will be big on city culture,” Salo
promises.

Get Eventified!
YIT’s playbook in this arena borrows a page
from ‘eventification’ – a shopping centre is
a great place for various concerts, pop-ups,
movie nights and other cultural happenings.
“For instance, there will be 10,000
square metres reserved only for restaurants

Carrying out these ambitious plans takes
broad shoulders. On December 17, 2015,
it was announced that YIT has succeeded
in putting together a coalition to raise the
Mall of Tripla. YIT led Etera Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Onvest Oy, Fennia
Mutual Insurance Company and Fennia Life
Insurance Company in signing a letter of
intent on the establishment of a joint venture for the implementation of the Mall of
Tripla and its parking facilities.
The overall value of the shopping mall
and the parking facility is approximately
EUR 600 million – which is quite remarkable, even by YIT’s standards.
“This is the biggest single construction
project in the history of the company. We
have built communities, over a long period
of time, or participated in large road construction projects – such as the E18 highway
– but nothing that can quite rival this,” Tapio
Salo comments on the scale of the project.

ping mall and the parking facility with the
property company (that is owned by the joint
venture) in spring 2016.
The building permit for the first implementation phase – the parking facility – has
already been granted, and the excavation
work is underway.
“Actually, we started doing the preparatory work on the site already in spring
2015, but now we have moved into excavation works,” Tapio Salo confirms.

Tripla Trending
But while the launch of the next-gen shopping centre is still almost four years away,
there is already a definite buzz in the retail
market. It appears that this type of a commercial superhub is exactly what the doctor ordered, even during trying economy.
Approximately 20 % of the retail space in