Witawa Gdynia

Developer Ekolan, working with Gdynia firm Allcon, opened Witawa in 2002-2003 in the Witomino district as a mixed residential-and-retail complex with 243 apartments above a shopping and service podium, becoming the first tall building constructed in the Tricity region since 1989. For years it functioned as Witomino’s default neighborhood shopping destination, combining fashion, grocery, electronics and services under one roof alongside the housing units above.

The retail portion has been in serious decline since a partial ceiling collapse in 2019 exposed the building’s technical condition, and a large share of tenants have since relocated to the nearby Riviera shopping center. Owner Safehouse, now in debt, saw the retail section and underground parking (roughly 12,450 sqm combined, with 5,986 sqm of let-out unit space specifically) put up for court-ordered bailiff auction, with a first auction date of November 15, 2024, a starting bid of roughly 26.9 million PLN against an estimated value of 35.9 million PLN. The residential portion of the building is not part of the auction.

Pepco and a car wash remain among the tenants still operating as of recent visitor reports, alongside Rossmann; a 2024 renovation attempt, including a proposed food hall designed by local studio Biuro Kreacja, aimed to revive the ground floor, though the subsequent auction announcement suggests that effort didn’t resolve the property’s underlying financial problems.

That trajectory, from the region’s first tall mixed-use tower to a retail podium now moving through insolvency proceedings, reflects how thoroughly Riviera’s opening reshaped Gdynia’s retail map relative to older, single-district centers built in the early 2000s boom.