At best, the floor plan will still be reminiscent of one of the defining buildings in a prominent place in the city centre in the future: Contrary to initial plans, the former Joh department store on Elvis-Presley-Platz on Kaiserstraße will have to be completely demolished. Initially, the new owner of the property, the Werkmann Group, wanted to preserve the basement and ground floor of the former department store and have staggered floors placed on them.
As it turned out, however, there are static reasons against the preservation of the lower part of the building, as managing director Uwe Werkmann and architect Andreas Schmitt from the Friedberg planning company BLFP explain. This was the result of drill samples, among other things. In addition, there were only incomplete documents from the basement of the building, which meant that the load-bearing capacities of the ceilings, for example, could not be calculated exactly. There is a lack of confidence in the design, as Schmitt said, and there is no way around demolition.
Perspectives for redesign
According to the design now presented, an ensemble consisting of three interconnected buildings, broken up by green inner courtyards, is being created on the property, which stretches from Kaiserstraße to the surrounding streets at the Stadtkirche. The fact that the old building has to disappear also has its good side, because it opens up more perspectives for new design.
This offers the opportunity to break up the cubature, as building planner Schmitt puts it. Instead of the previous front facing Kaiserstraße, the new building will have a loosened façade with recesses and overhangs and should fit better into the street alignment. This also applies to the arrangement of the buildings in the rear part in the direction of the town church. Last but not least, the buildings are presented at different heights, with five to seven storeys. A rooftop café with a terrace, with a panoramic view of the shopping street and traffic artery Kaiserstraße, the castle and the old town, wants to set a special accent.
The use of the future Kaiser Forum is to be as complex as the architecture, and we are talking about a multifunctional building. This means that a mix of retail, offices, practices and apartments is to be established on a total floor space of 12,700 square meters. As a so-called anchor use, a full-range grocery store is planned on the ground floor.
45 apartments of different sizes designed
In addition, there is still room for the self-service area of a bank and especially for a new location for the city's tourist information office, which is currently located at the town hall, a little away from the tourist scene. In particular, however, new living space is being created in the middle of the city. A total of 45 apartments of different sizes have been designed – ranging in size from 45 to 155 square metres. After conversion and expansion, the former storage rooms of the department store are to serve primarily as an underground car park, with several dozen parking spaces for bicycles also to be designated.
As far as the timetable for the realization of this project with an investment volume of about 36.5 million euros is concerned, the developer is now concluding an urban development contract with the city on the basis of the design. In the summer, according to Uwe Werkmann, the disclosure of the plans could take place after a decision by the committees. The further procedure is to weigh up the suggestions and change requests received and, if necessary, to incorporate them. Werkmann expects that building permits will be in place by the end of the year.
So when the excavators are expected to arrive at the beginning of next year, the standstill on the property, which has lasted around a decade, will come to an end. For many years, the Joh department store was one of the most popular stores in the Kaiserstraße shopping mile, but it had to close in autumn 2013 in the wake of the insolvency of the Gelnhausen-based company. In the period that followed, there were still niche uses, but otherwise the building, which dates back to the seventies in its current form, is empty. Previous attempts to find a viable succession solution failed.
Universal department store is history
A British investment company that had taken over the house could not find a tenant. Then, as the new owner, the property development company 3V Invest came on the scene and developed detailed plans for how the property could be used. It was clear that a revival as a universal department store was out of the question at this point. Thus, the property development company relied on a mixture of uses, not significantly different from what the Werkmann Group now wants to realize.
Nevertheless, there was no progress, the investor spoke of a difficult search for suitable tenants. So the concept was revised, one or the other was discarded and reinserted. But nothing happened, speculation made the rounds that the company wanted to withdraw and was just waiting for an opportune time to resell. Instead, however, 3V Invest once again presented plans for change. Now, however, the city no longer participated, rejected a further change in the building plans, and there was no majority in the committees for an urban development contract. This is how the Werkmann Group from Dietzenbach finally came into play.