Growth with a clear focus
MediaCity Adlershof is expanding
Prices for real estate in Berlin are increasing, while additional land for new businesses is scarce. The Adlershof site is becoming more densely populated. This is a new development.
The doors keep turning at the office of Katerina Malinski, who has been department head for sales and law at Adlershof Projekt GmbH since March. “The demand for vacant lots is very high,” she says. Volker Dittmar of the Kreuzberg-based advertising agency Peix Healthcare Communication GmbH is looking forward to moving to Adlershof. Peix purchased a 1,500-sqm lot in Adlershof’s MediaCity. His agency focuses on advertising for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. “Peix has been around for 25 years. It has developed so well in recent years that our former headquarters has hit capacity,” says Volker Dittmar.
Dittmar is the project head at Peix who responsible for construction in Adlershof. The agency originally planned on staying in Kreuzberg and to refurbish an old factory building on Erkelenzdamm. However, according to Dittmar, the company gravitated towards Adlershof with its “distinct campus character and spirit of innovation. We were convinced by its mixture of students, start-ups, studios, high-tech companies and scientific institutes,” he says. Peix will invest four million euros in a three-storey office building on the intersection of Ernst-Augustin and Willi-Schwabe-Strasse. The company is planning to establish a competence centre for pharmaceutical advertising. The building will provide offices to the 90 Peix employees as well as to freelance PR, medical advisors and other creatives. Start of construction is planned for March 2019. The company plans on moving in in early 2020.
Construction on the Peix headquarters’ neighbouring lot is planned to start as early as the third quarter of 2018. The company Willi-Schwabe-Straße GmbH bought the 3,300-sqm lot to construct a four-storey office building for the Berlin-based company Emarsys Interactive Services GmbH. Emarsys is an international software company specialised in marketing. Ist Berlin office is currently on Stralauer Platz, near Ostbahnhof station. Emarsys is also growing and looking for a new location. “We currently have 150 employees in Berlin. We are planning to expand to 180 by early 2020, when we move into the new offices in Adlershof,” says Mark-Oliver Maigré, manager at Willi-Schwabe-Straße GmbH. Adlershof quickly came out top in the process of finding a good location for Emarsys. “We quickly disproved the contention that Adlershof was too far afield,” he says. Adlershof is easy to reach by public transport and the motorway. Moreover, it is close to the future BER airport. Other companies looking to relocate to Adlershof share this view. Malinski is glad that the last vacant lot in MediaCity has now been matched with a suitable buyer.
The dynamism of Adlerhof is gradually catching a hold of the area between Groß-Berliner Damm and Betriebsbahnhof Schöneweide, a depot that will be developed into a second urban railway station for the Adlershof/Johannisthal development area. Adlershof is growing rapidly. Contracts for new lots are awarded to companies that match the site’s scientific and technological profile. This profile is determined by the site’s technology clusters that are supported by technology centres. Adding to that, Adlershof has a distinct focus on research and development. Due to the high demand and increasingly low supply, state-owned real estate will be awarded to companies based on competitions. Katerina Malinski and her team are currently working out the details. Moreover, the state government’s property has policy has changed: state-owned properties are given out according to hereditary building rights and not by selling them.
By Sylvia Nitschke for Adlershof Journal