Leeds, 15th October 2015 Sometime I have heard the expression that modern merchants and retailers want to be, over everything, in the downtown. And that if many of them open establishments in the suburbs of the big cities it is just only because they cannot do it inside, either by for not finding spaces adapted to its size, or by the prohibitive prices that sometimes they find The reflection is relevant to the coincidence in time of the opening of the great shop Primark in Gran Vía of Madrid, and the award ceremony of the ICSC to Trinity Leeds, the shopping centre that Land Securities inaugurated in 2013. I feel very pleased by seeing in the city centres such strong commercial concentrations! Incorporating the most highly collection that the modern commercial sector can offer. In Leeds's downtown, sixth city in the ranking purchase in Great Britain, together to the Marks&Spencer, BHS, Next, TopShop, Primark de Trinity Leeds, line up in the same commercial pedestrian core the House of Fraser, Debenhams, Gap, Zara, H&M … Also with Harvey Nichols in the incredible shopping galleries of Vitoria Quarter, And with the arrival in 2016 of wished John Lewis in newly Victoria Gate who is promoting Hammerson. How does one compete from the suburbs with these macro commercial concentrations? There is better way of invigorating and regenerating life in downtown downtown than with a commercial offer of this type?

Girardot, 28th may 2015 What more pleasing memories! What lucky times we have lived with the progressive development of the formula of the shopping centres in Spain in the 80s and 90s! ! What magic was radiating every new center that was coming to a medium-size size city! Today I remember again with contained emotion these sensations esensations in the medium-size size cities in Colombia. I visited thel Unicentro in Girardot, a city of approximately 80.000 inhabitants to the south of Bogota, newly inaugurated by Pedro Gómez, probably the of most tradition promoter of the national scene. A big center, of 23.000 m2, well executed , with all the facilities and characteristics of the present centers. And with an interesting collection of many of the store chains that are obtaining national implantation in the country. The Manager was explaining to myself as the neighbors of the municipality they were approaching with respect, in amazement, to the facilities of the centre. How they were experimenting, they were rising and going down the mechanical stairs that they had never seen, how they were appearing to the shop windows, how there were astonished by the materials, the cleanliness, the gardening, how they were showing almost religious respect for a new world full of unknown sensations,and that now, by the hand of the new shopping centre, ending up being at their disposal, more than never. It has been always said that any real-estate promotion is the result of many years of work, of commitment, of taking risks on the part of a promoter. But the special of the shopping centre is to verify how, from the following day of the inauguration, the result of all this effort delivers to the population to whom is going to give service, and how they will make it immediately theirs, they are really going to get to feel it. And in what extent his commercial future success is going to precisely depend on this appropriation. What satisfaction to verify that the mechanism continues repeating itself in the new countries, in the new cities that are joining to the fórmula!