Recklinghausen.
Empty department stores can block a city’s development. Recklinghausen is showing how this can be solved. Mixture does it.
Karstadt is wrong. Of course, as a passer-by, you can’t tell by looking at the eight-storey block in the heart of Recklinghausen that over the decades it has cleverly given way to one or the other subsidence. But Udo Obermann knows exactly what he did himself: among other things, the interior fittings compensated for a difference in height of 60 to 70 centimeters at a depth of 54 meters. Everything is prepared for the coming residents. Everything straight. Even.
For almost three years now, Udo Obermann has been the project manager who is turning the former department store into the “Marktquartier”. “There are still small things that need to be done,” says the architect from Düsseldorf. Inside you will find a mixture of remaining work and final cleaning, then new life will come here. Destination early summer. And the building also looks good, for the most part it shines in snow-white. Very nice. “We actually think so too,” says Obermann.
Other department stores will soon enter the non-existent market
Now the old department store can easily pass as a prime example for a new use. The company AIP from Düsseldorf had already demolished the Kaufhof in Mülheim down to the floor slab and then built a new large property in the same place and filled it with mixed use. There is now another reference object in Recklinghausen – just in time to look for more empty blocks that will soon tumble onto a market that actually doesn’t exist at all.
So: Aldi, the restaurant “Extrablatt” and the hotel “Holiday Inn Express” have already moved into the main building in Recklinghausen and are now in operation. The 87 barrier-free apartments above are practically finished, as is the station with day and short-term care places from “Bonifatius Seniorendienste GmbH”. She will also offer care services to the residents of the apartments, if desired. A pharmacy and one of the largest dental practices in Germany have moved into the large, former Karstadt bed house right next door. The upper floors belong to the new day care center. The little ones have a view. . .
Many need more than five years, not a few more than ten
Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof will leave many cities in Germany in the coming months. Essen, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen among them, a department store in Duisburg is also affected. In the town halls, they already think with horror of the time when the former consumer giants stand in the way of urban development as useless colossuses. One can confidently predict that these will be tough years. But behind it a little light flickers.
Nina Hangebruch, the room planner from Dortmund, knows this very well. She has researched 220 locations that have been abandoned by department stores in Germany since 1994. A third of the buildings were demolished, two thirds are being reused. Always in a mix. Trade and gastronomy are possible for them, as well as offices, hotels, care, fitness, city administration. . . But it takes time. Often longer than five years, not infrequently more than ten.
“A financially strong, professional and goal-oriented investor”
It took seven years in Recklinghausen. Mayor Christoph Tesche (CDU) feels today “like winning the lottery that a financially strong, professional and determined investor has tackled the project”. A total of two shops and a restaurant are still available. “The occupancy rate is 95 percent,” says Obermann – although it is up to the Bonifatius services to rent out the apartments.
The project developers have left many a stone unturned. Udo Obermann shines his mobile phone through a supply hole into the dark above a ceiling, where the old department store false ceiling can actually be seen in the empty space. But Karstadt ceiling heights of 5.40 meters would probably have made marketing senior housing more difficult, one has to assume; and the hotel would have been a bit shy.
They are still working on the roof terraces
So the department store has also changed a lot visually. Windows were cut into the front, new elevator shafts were built, the low ceilings, the balconies. They are still working on the roof terraces. But the showpiece is the courtyard. Tons and tons of stone, concrete, and steel had to be cut and removed from inside the building or the whole would have remained a deep, dark, unusable complex. No thought then of apartments.
The courtyard is green and accessible. Lawn is growing, trees are blooming, plants are climbing. White facades surround the courtyard on all sides, five to seven floors – depending on the side – completely keep the inner-city noise away. Where’s the splashing coming from? They have created a water basin here and a higher watercourse: the splashing is an atmospheric intention. And has nothing to do with the inconsistency. That’s it: just.
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