Hamburg, 27.06.2022 – The GBI Group has completed a neighbourhood development in Hamburg's City-Süd with two hotels and a total of 628 rooms as well as 54 city flats. After a construction period of two and a half years in the Hammerbrook district, the buildings with a gross floor area of around 25,000 square meters above ground (approx. 29,500 square meters including underground car park and basement) have now been handed over to the operators and investors. The niu Yen with 347 rooms has already opened. The Premier Inn with 281 rooms will follow shortly. The letting of the modern city apartments, mostly two room apartments, is in full swing. "Despite the special situation with the effects of COVID and supply chain problems, we managed to complete the project with only minor delays," highlights Reiner Nittka, spokesman for the Board of GBI Holding AG: "And not only the schedule but also the budget planning remained almost unchanged. This stands as testament to the special achievement by our team and the excellent cooperation with NORD PROJECT, with whom we jointly implement real estate developments in the north of Germany".
Another special feature: All three real estate areas of the quarter were sold to investors early on, with the hotels even being sold by the time construction started in 2020. The Premier Inn property will be taken over by its British parent company Whitbread PLC itself. Thus, upon completion, the location will become part of the British group’s real estate portfolio. The 347 rooms of the niu Yen went to the special real estate fund for hotels of the Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), one of the most important institutional investors in Germany. And BMO Real Estate Partners Germany acquired the 54 city flats for its real estate 'Best Value Wohnen III’ fund. "The investor combination of a hotel fund as well as a residential fund and an owner-operator from the hotel segment shows that this location and neighbourhood concept is finding great interest in the most diverse areas," emphasises Simon Behr, Managing Director of GBI Capital.
The Hamburg project also illustrates a special development trend. "Such a combination of accommodation and residential offers is a promising model for the future which we are realising at more and more locations," explains Anja Bachmann, Head of Development at GBI Holding AG: "The challenging Corona period in particular has impressively shown that the combination of different uses is particularly important for lively and liveable neighbourhoods. This is how you realise attractive and also sustainable urban spaces, something that cities are placing more and more emphasis on. Hamburg-Hammerbrook is an impressive blueprint for such successful implementations."
In terms of planning law, apartments in this zone, which was designated as a business area, were not even considered for City-Süd in the beginning. "However, when the administration drew up a corresponding B-Plan, we took jumped on the opportunity for an extended mixed use concept," says Jürgen Paul, Managing Director of NORD PROJECT: "All areas of the neighbourhood benefit from this." Mixed use project developments are the speciality of GBI and NORD PROJECT. "And such a combination presented itself here in Hamburg. For both travellers and modern city dwellers, the convenient location is ideal," Jürgen Paul emphasises. The location is readily accessible by public transport thanks to the nearby main railway station and via the nearby Hammerbrook and Berliner Tor S-Bahn stations, even when travelling from the airport.
Architects of the real estate trio are the Hamburg company pbp prasch buken partner architekten partG mbB (design architect niu) and GBI Planungs- und Baumanagement GmbH (design architect Premier Inn + Apartments, as well as complete implementation planning). It is to be emphasized that despite of the Corona Virus and material supply problems the schedules from 2019 could be kept," stresses GBI division manager of the building execution Klaus Wrede: “The success is due to the excellent work in the project team as well as due to a partnership-like cooperation with the companies involved and the operators."
For GBI, the Hamburg Mixed Use is already the second major project of a real estate quarter in one of the top 7 cities in Germany. 32,700 square metres were completed in Düsseldorf in the spring of this year. Three accommodation options, the Adina Apartment Hotel, Hampton by Hilton and a Premier Inn have been built right next to the main railway station. With a total of 717 completed hotel rooms, the real estate project was thus even slightly larger than the current project in Hamburg. The project also includes aBlock House steak restaurant for up to 122 diners and an underground car park operated by APCOA PARKING with 238 parking spaces. In contrast to Hamburg, the Düsseldorf investment did not go to three different institutional investors, but to a single investor. DWS had acquired the properties there - also before the start of construction - at a price of 157 million euros for the open-ended real estate mutual fund grundbesitz europa.
Including further hotels in Nuremberg and Wiesbaden, GBI has sold a total of 1800 hotel rooms to investors in the first half of 2022. This brings the total sales volume of the GBI Group to 400 million euros. "This shows how successfully the development team made it through the Corona crisis," emphasises board spokesman Nittka.
