The largest urban development project in Europe isn’t in Berlin or Frankfurt; it’s in Hamburg, where bulldozers are at work on HafenCity (Harbor City), a 250-acre swath of waterfront. J rgen Bruns-Berentelg, a former executive for New York City-based developer Tishman Speyer, is determined to make Harbor City, located on the edge of Hamburg’s downtown, different from other recent European mega-developments that have faltered.
Harbor City is certainly ambitious. When it’s done in 2020, the redevelopment will expand commercial space in the city’s core by 40 percent. Altogether, the project includes 20 million square feet of floor space, 6,000 new apartments, hotels and even a concert hall designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the Pritzker Prize-winning Swiss firm behind 40 Bond Street, the downtown Manhattan luxury condominium.
Harbor City is a private/public venture — private developers are erecting the buildings, while the whole project is conceived and directed by the city government of Hamburg. Because the city owns much of the land under development, roughly $1 billion of its $1.7 billion share of the project will be funded through lot sales.
The rest, roughly $6.2 billion, is being carried by private investment.
The approach of planners has been different from many private/public projects. Bundling all project responsibilities under the roof of HafenCity Hamburg GmbH — a private company wholly owned by Hamburg — they streamlined decision-making for things like building permits and subway extensions.
“Anyone who wants to do anything at all in the HafenCity knows who he has to talk to,” said Bruns-Berentelg, CEO of HafenCity Hamburg GmbH. “We operate as a one-stop agency in a transparent process, so that all involved parties can work very, very fast.”
Because European cities have so much history — and often zoning rules that go along with those districts — cities looking to create modern business hubs often allow private firms to develop distinct new neighborhoods. That’s what happened with Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz, which was transformed in the 1990s into a retail and commercial office center.
Bruns-Berentelg, who had a role in developing the mixed-use Sony Center in the Potsdamer Platz when he was a Tishman executive, said he learned there the necessity of having a single manager watch over the big picture.
“When I was at Tishman Speyer in the 1990s, all the projects were being developed individually. No one felt responsible for the overall planning idea,” he said.
“Retailers became insecure about the location,” he continued. “I think we have been trying to learn from that here.”
The city is trying to keep speculative building in Harbor City to a minimum by requiring most investors to pre-lease 50 percent of office space. Currently, leases are a who’s who of German business, including software giant SAP AG, logistics company Kuehne + Nagel and German publisher Spiegel-Gruppe.