Having acquired and managed more than £1bn in retail investments in both the UK and Europe, Resolution has since acquired the Centro Commercial Carrefour retail park in Aveiro, Northern Portugal, and Lowen Park retail park in Leipzig, Germany.

In January 2006 Resolution bought Megapark Barakaldo in Bilbao, Spain, which includes a retail park, leisure park and fashion outlet centre.

Advised by Jones Lang LaSalle and Lovells, Resolution acquired the retail park and outlet centre from Arcona Iberia and its joint venture partners for £177m. Resolution is yet to purchase the leisure phase, which is anchored by an 11-screen IMAX cinema and is the missing link between the two shopping areas, but Resolution director Nigel Robson said the company plans to acquire it to create a uniformity across the scheme, to increase shopper dwelltime and encourage cross-fertilisation between the retail park and the outlet centre.

Megapark was developed in three phases, with the newly-named Park Avenue only completed last year. At the time of purchase, Park Avenue was a full-priced centre and was covered under the Megapark banner, but Robson and his team took the decision to go back to the original plan for the 140,000-sq ft site, and transform Park Avenue into an outlet centre with its own identity.

Robson explained: "We've spent a few months developing the brand Park Avenue, which was chosen to demonstrate the quality and also links in well with Megapark. We had to launch it as a new identity and new concept - a concept that's new to the Basque region.

"It's taken a long time to get retailers to the table because they have seen the scheme before - but suddenly this is a new product with new managers."

The developer had managed to secure eight or nine retailers to the original full-priced scheme, but they were all local and were not the quality line-up Resolution aspires to. "The main reason for its failure is across the road there is the Max Center, which is half-a-million square foot of full-priced retail owned by ING," said Robson.

"Park Avenue was designed as a factory outlet so it's logical that we do a factory outlet."

With the majority of retailers moving out of the centre, having opted not to convert to factory outlets, many new names have been introduced into the scheme. Park Avenue is now over 64 per cent let with expectations that it will be 80 to 90 per cent let by September. Recently-signed names include Mango, Nike Supersport, Fifty Factory, J Mas G and Desigual, which join the likes of Levi's and Animal.

The 70-unit development is the only fashion outlet centre within 270km and offers a catchment of 3.5 million within a 90-minute drivetime - one-third of which lives within a 15-minute drivetime. In addition, planning regulations permit no further retail development in the area, which makes it a very promising investment.

Marketing manager Ibone Unibaso explained: "At the moment people drive four-and-a-half hours to Madrid for their outlet shopping. The income within our catchment is one of the highest in Spain and we spend a lot."

Unibaso is focusing her attentions on educating the catchment about what outlet shopping is, how the pricing structure works and changing people's perceptions of the scheme. A soft launch in June brought consumers within a 10-minute drivetime to visit the centre. The next campaign will take place in September, when more retailers will be open for trading and will attract visitors from further afield.

Despite it being a new development, Resolution has spent R5m on refurbishments at Park Avenue since its purchase, in a bid to create the correct environment and identity for the outet. The latest project to be undertaken is the re-landscaping of the plaza and malls, which has been commissioned to Juan Von Knoblock, one of Spain's leading landscape architects. "We're finishing work where the developers haven't quite got it right," explained Robson.

Resolution has gone into business with local partners Realm and Jones Lang LaSalle in order to leverage off their expertise within the European outlet market. "We'll use Megapark as a platform in Spain," said Robson. "You build a management team that deals in that market and you leverage off that. That's what we've done in Germany and Portugal."

The 925,000-sq ft retail warehousing site, meanwhile, was opened for trade in 2004, at the same time as owner occupiers Leroy Merlin and Ikea.

With an annual footfall of 15 million customers, Megapark is hugely successful, with Ikea being a massive draw. But Robson and his team want to build on its success by introducing a fashion element into the 15-unit scheme - a concept that consumers and local retailers are not familiar with in Europe.

So far retailers such as Dutch fashion giant C&A, Spain's largest sports good retailer Forum Sports and department store El Corte Ingles have joined the line-up which also currently includes PC City, Mediamarkt, Surcouf, Conforama, Spain's first Saturn store and sports store Decathlon. Only one 19,375-sq ft store now remains within the retail park.

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