Union Investment has acquired a 100-metre-high office tower comprising of 24,000m² rental space in Frankfurt’s banking district. The acquisition will be added to the holdings of open-ended real estate fund UniImmo: Deutschland and is one of four high-rise towers currently under construction. It is also the first building in the new complex to be sold to an investor. Completion is scheduled for 2022. The vendor and project partner is developer Groß & Partner. The purchase price was not disclosed. Union Investment was advised on the deal by Savills, Hogan Lovells and P+P Pollath & Partners.
The building is already more than 35% pre-let, with law firm Baker McKenzie is set to occupy around 8,200m² of space in the finished building. The office tower will be 100 metres high and comprise 25 upper floors. The property also includes 105 parking spaces in an underground car park shared by the buildings in the new ensemble. The office tenants access the building from Junghofstraße via a prestigious multi-storey reception area featuring glass, steel and natural stone elements. This is located in a five-storey base building with a heritage-protected facade dating from the early 1960s. Around 930m² of space in the base building is earmarked for retail outlets, restaurants and cafés.
The property is a part of the FOUR Frankfurt high-rise complex designed by Amsterdam-based architects UNStudio.
“Our investment in this development project is our largest real estate transaction in Frankfurt for more than ten years,” said Alejandro Obermeyer, head of Investment Management DACH at Union Investment Real Estate GmbH. “We are taking advantage of what is currently a rare opportunity to purchase a premium property at an early stage of construction for our flagship fund, which focuses on commercial property in Germany.”
Chief Investment Officer Martin J. Bruhl added: “Acquiring development projects and contributing our own expertise has been one of Union Investment’s key strengths for many years. It is benefiting us enormously in the current market phase in Europe and beyond. We recently acquired the Grand Central development at Saint-Lazare station in Paris, which is of a comparable size and has a similar construction period.”
