HELSINKI: A group of international businessmen are about to transform the Port of HaminaKotka into a shopping paradise for passengers cruising the Baltic Sea. The Kotka Old Port a seemingly disproportionate commercial complex for a town of 55,000 residents would feature a shopping centre, hotels, restaurants and cinemas.
The shopping centre would be unique in Finland in housing over 200 shops offering last season’s fashion at reduced prices. The requisite land use plans are currently being pushed through as the first phase of the project – the construction of the outlet centre – is scheduled to begin in the second half of the year.
Henry Lindelöf, the Mayor of Kotka, is convinced by the merits of the project. The group of British and American businessmen has appealed to the town by promising that the commercial complex would boost tax revenues by millions of euros and create more than 700 permanent jobs in the unemployment-ridden region.
