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Henley Investment Management has completed the sale of Galeria Pestka in Poznań to OPAL CENTRES, a subsidiary of DromeStar Group. The 41,658 m² shopping centre was acquired by Henley in 2021.
Four years later, it is leaving with the business plan delivered in full. Annual footfall has climbed from 4.8 million to 5.1 million, surpassing pre-COVID 2019 levels.
Occupancy sits above 95%. Avison Young advised commercially and GT Law provided legal counsel for Henley.
What Henley Actually Did to the Asset
The turnaround was operational, not cosmetic. Henley secured 61 new lettings and renewals during its ownership period.
New arrivals included Action, Jysk and Woolworth. The food court received a full refurbishment and is now anchored by five operators including KFC, OLIMP and Sphinx.
The two-level centre's 60 units are anchored by Carrefour, Bricomarché and MediaMarkt. Supporting tenants include CCC, Pepco, Dealz, Action, Rossmann and Sinsay. The tenant roster was built for resilience.
Grocery, DIY and daily-needs operators anchor footfall regardless of what the broader consumer environment is doing. Fashion-led centres are more exposed to discretionary spending cycles.
Galeria Pestka's mix was constructed to avoid exactly that vulnerability.
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Why Poznań Is the Right Location for This Story
Poznań is Poland's fifth-largest city. It functions as a genuine financial and industrial hub, not a satellite market dependent on Warsaw's economic gravity.
That matters for retail investment. A well-managed secondary-city centre with a daily-needs anchor base and a captive local consumer pool behaves differently from a fashion mall in a smaller commuter town.
Tom Duff, Investment Director at Henley, said the tenant mix and food offer were brought up to date during the ownership period, occupancy was maintained and footfall grew.
With the business plan delivered in full, it was the right moment to sell and realise the returns for investors.
Also Read: Pavăl Holding Acquires Land Next to Swiss Luxury Resort
What This Transaction Signals for CEE Retail
There is a wider signal in this deal for investors scanning Poland's retail landscape.
A regional, non-Warsaw shopping centre has traded hands with a full occupancy story and growing footfall, at a time when prime retail in the capital remains scarce and expensive.
Galeria Pestka demonstrates that well-managed secondary-city retail anchored by resilient daily-needs tenants rather than discretionary fashion can deliver exit liquidity even when headline retail investment volumes across the region stay subdued.
Henley, which has deployed approximately $3 billion in capital across more than 100 investments, continues to focus on urban regeneration and on living, office, industrial, logistics, retail and alternative sector investments across Europe and the US.
For investors currently waiting for Warsaw-only opportunities, the Poznań transaction is a quiet argument for widening the search radius.
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