# Europaviertel

The Europaviertel (European quarter) is a housing and business quarter development in the Gallus district of Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is built on the former ground of the main goods station Hauptgüterbahnhof. Development work began in 2005, and the first building was opened in 2006. Upon its completion, the area will have offices, hotels, apartments, a school and social infrastructure, parks, and shopping and leisure facilities. The completion of a connection to Frankfurt's U-Bahn is planned for after 2025. Europaviertel will approximately have a population of 30,000 workers and 8,000 to 10,000 residents; This ratio could still shift in favor of the number of residents due to the increased demand for apartments since around 2012. The Skyline Plaza complex, including a shopping mall and congress center, is within the district.

## Size and Location

The cleared area is almost 90 hectares (220 acres) in size. The area is divided - based on the two property owners - into Europaviertel West and Europaviertel Ost. The clearly visible border is the elevated track of the Main–Weser Railway on the bridge Emser Brücke, between the stations Galluswarte and Messe. In the western part, Aurelis Asset GmbH owns 66.7 hectares (165 acres) and in the eastern part, 18 hectares (44 acres) belong to Vivico Real Estate GmbH (since June 2011: CA Immo). Today the district covers a total of 145 hectares (360 acres), including other peripheral areas. The area extends approximately 2.4 kilometres (1.5 mi) from the residential area on the Rebstock area and the Kuhwaldsiedlung in the northwest along the exhibition grounds to Güterplatz in the southeast. South of the Europaviertel the Hellerhofsiedlung housing area in the "old" Gallus is located.

## History

Ideas for relocating the freight railway facilities that were previously on the site already existed between the two World Wars. They came to an end with the Second World War and were not taken up again afterwards. Instead, the destroyed facilities were rebuilt and modernized in the 1960s. It was only with the expansion of the city of Frankfurt to the west, which found its highly visible expression in the skyscraper silhouette, particularly the trade fair tower, that the pressure to use the space to a higher quality increased. In addition, there was the need to expand the Frankfurt trade fair, the move of the Federal Railway headquarters in 1993 to a new building on the site of the repair shop on Idsteiner Straße, which had already been closed in 1989, and the structural change in rail freight transport towards transport with containers. Both the trade fair and the Deutsche Bundesbahn commissioned studies into a conversion, initially limited to the areas east of the Emser Bridge. In 1996, as part of its Frankfurt 21 project, Deutsche Bahn decided to close the main freight yard and the marshalling yard west of the Emser Bridge and to relocate the remaining freight activities. The container traffic was concentrated in the expanded terminal at the Ostbahnhof, the general cargo traffic ended up on the road and the shunting business was taken up in other marshalling yards, e.g. B. in Mainz-Bischofsheim. Operations at the main freight station were discontinued in 1998. In 1999, the Frankfurt planning office Albert Speer & Partner (AS&P) created a framework plan for the future development of the area on behalf of Deutsche Bahn. The usage concept envisaged shares of 25 percent each for residential areas, green areas, trade fair expansion and mixed areas for the derelict railway areas. A competing plan, which the architect Helmut Jahn designed on behalf of Deutsche Bank under the title Messestadt, was not pursued further because Deutsche Bahn did not want to sell the core site. First, the neighboring Messe Frankfurt acquired 31,000 m² of space in order to be able to expand its premises to the south. On the expansion area, among other things, were created: from 2000 to 2001 the exhibition hall 3 and the new east gate. Subsequently, in 2003, shunting operations were also stopped, clearing the way for construction work in the western European Quarter.

### Europaviertel East

* August 2004: Start of construction of Europa-Allee
* May 2006: Completion of the Mövenpick Hotel
* November 2007: Groundbreaking ceremony for the first apartments on Europa-Allee
* January 2008: Contract between Vivico and Hyatt for a Grand Hyatt. In spring 2013 it was announced that the Hyatt Group had abandoned the project. At this point south of Kap Europa there is now a hotel on a property that has been divided again; The southern high-rise called the Grand Tower (formerly “Tower 2”) has been under construction since the beginning of 2016 and, at 172 meters, is Germany's tallest purely-residential property.
* September 2008: Groundbreaking for Tower 185
* October 2008: Groundbreaking ceremony for the Europa-Allee 12–22 office building
* November 2008: Start of construction of the Meininger Hotel
* July 2009: The first apartments are occupied in the Europaviertel
* February 2010: Meininger Hotel is completed
* September 2022: The One high-rise building, which is located on the construction site north of Kap Europa and reaches a height of 175 meters, was opened.
* Building law also exists for a (currently dormant) project, the up-to-369-meter high Millennium Tower.

### Europaviertel West

By mid-2010, Aurelis had cleared the 66.7-hectare part of the development area west of the Emser Bridge of old tracks, disposed of any contamination and made it accessible. In the course of 18 months of work, around 300,000 cubic metres of material were moved and reinstalled. Aurelis began marketing its site in the Europaviertel West in September 2008. Two open residential quarters are to be built to the north-west. One is the "Helenenhöfe" and the other is the "Parkend", where 18 high-quality properties will be named after well-known European parks. The Helenenhöfe will largely be publicly subsidised housing; overall, the Europaviertel will offer 30 percent of subsidised housing. In addition, two mixed-use quarters, "Boulevard Mitte" and "Boulevard West", are to be built in a central location (directly on Europaallee), which will reflect the full diversity of an urban district with offices, restaurants and social facilities. The old signal box of the former freight station was located directly on the route of Boulevard Mitte. Although well-preserved, original and worthy of preservation, it had to be demolished in July 2014. Boulevard West will also see the revival of a long-despised building type: with Axis (60 metres high) and Westside Tower (66 metres), Frankfurt will once again have two purely-residential high-rises after a long absence, and more will follow in Boulevard Mitte. For the 4,000 to 5,000 residents expected in the West area, three day-care centres and a primary school, a supermarket, local shops, restaurants, a pharmacy and doctor's offices as well as the central Tel-Aviv-Platz are planned. Boulevard Mitte will be the focus of the office and service buildings, as well as smaller commercial premises and condominiums. Its entrances will be marked by two high-rise buildings at the Emser Brücke and at the Europagarten.
The focal point and connecting element of these quarters will be the 6-hectare "Europagarten" park with a representative fountain, under which the otherwise 60-meter-wide, boulevard-like Europa-Allee will be led in a three-cell tunnel approximately 400 meters long. The shell of the tunnel was completed in June 2016, and its road function was opened at the beginning of December 2016. The first section of the Europagarten has been completed since January 2011, also with the intention of giving potential property buyers a visual idea of the future appearance of the area. The previously completely flat Gleisfeld was partially modeled as slightly hilly, and with a third of planned green space it is intended to form a natural urban space. According to the current planning status, the Europaviertel West is to develop quietly and harmoniously, with the target date for development being around 2020.
In spring 2013, the Europagarten received a continuous green connection with the new Rebstockpark from a small "Gleisfeldpark", connected by a pedestrian bridge over the lower "Straße der Nationen" and the new triangular "Zeppelinpark". The " Lotte-Specht-Park " was created in autumn 2014 as a connection to the old buildings on Idsteiner Straße in the southeast. These smaller green spaces, which have been laid out with recreational and play areas, increase the value of the adjacent residential buildings currently being built. Around 40 percent of the purely residential buildings can thus advertise themselves as "right next to the park". The condominiums offered so far in the upper price segment are often largely sold off the plan, or at the latest by the time construction begins.
The Europaallee has been expanded to its full width in the middle section since summer 2014. This central axis will be led into the tunnel under the Eurogarten. The Europagarten was completed in 2018, but was not allowed to be used for a long time due to structural defects and was closed to the public until it was finally opened in December 2022.
The Solid Home building, designed by KSP Jürgen Engel Architekten, with its 200 condominiums units, is part of a new and next generation of residential high-rises in the west of Frankfurt.