Construction of new buildings on the MesseCity fairground started yesterday in Cologne. In the presence of many guests, mayor Henriette Reker, Dr Andreas Mattner, Managing Director ECE Projektmanagement, Rainer M. Schaefer, regional head Cologne of STRABAG Real Estate (SRE), Torsten Kuttig, Director Development ECE, Horst Nussbaumer, board member of Zurich Group Germany, Hans-Joachim Lehmann, Managing Director of Warburg-HIH Invest, Martin Oster of KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten and Andreas Kühn, managing partner of ASTOC Architects and Planners, symbolically turned the first spade in a groundbreaking ceremony. Overall, about 135,000m² of total gross floor area will be constructed on a c. 5.4 hectare site in Deutz, a district of Cologne.
Prior to the start of the works, the development partners SRE and ECE had signed an agreement with Zurich Group Germany at the beginning of May. The insurance group will rent about 60,000m² of office space in the western part of the new district. From 2019, about 2,700 employees of the insurance company will move into the new premises from their current offices in Cologne and Bonn. The three buildings intended for the group in the MesseCity will be built based on designs by architects KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten. Construction of these buildings starts at the same time as construction of the underground parking with 600 parking spaces in the western section.
The sale of the first building plots in Cologne’s MesseCity area to Warburg-HIH Invest was also completed before groundbreaking. Acting on behalf of institutional investors, the property investment manager acquired the building plots West 1 to 3 on which new buildings for Zurich Group with c. 60,000m² of overall office space will be erected.
