Akademia Center Cluj

Iulius Group, the Iași-founded developer behind Romania’s national Iulius shopping-center and mixed-use chain, opened Iulius Mall Cluj on November 10, 2007 in the Gheorgheni district of Cluj-Napoca, near the city’s university campuses. It was the group’s third mall nationally, following Iulius Mall Iași and Iulius Mall Timișoara, built at an initial cost of roughly €75-80 million.

At approximately 53,150 sqm of leasable space, Iulius Mall Cluj carries around 250 stores across four floors, two of them underground and roof parking. Auchan anchors a roughly 16,000 sqm hypermarket floor, with the full Inditex portfolio, Zara, Bershka, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius and Massimo Dutti, plus H&M and Tommy Hilfiger, anchoring fashion. Cinema City runs a 10-screen multiplex, and the property also carries a roughly 2,000 sqm indoor swimming pool and a fitness club, an unusual combination for a Romanian mall of this era.

Iulius Group developed Iulius Business Center directly adjacent, a Class A office building fully leased to corporate tenants, and Iulius Parc, a green public park with walking paths, lawns and lakeside terraces, extending the property’s role beyond pure retail into a genuine mixed-use neighborhood anchor. More than 2,300 parking spaces serve the complex.

That combination, a national chain’s third mall paired with adjacent office and park development from day one, reflects Iulius Group’s consistent playbook across its properties in Iași, Timișoara, Suceava and Cluj: retail as the anchor tenant for a broader, company-controlled urban district rather than a standalone shopping center.