Those involved in the planning and construction joined other invited guests today to celebrate the completion of the structural shell of the new InterCityHotel. The hotel, from the InterCityHotel brand belonging to the Steigenberger Group, forms part of the Europacity district development around Berlin’s main train station. “Here we are putting into practice the well-founded ideas of urban planning competition. At the same time, we have reached another significant milestone on time and within the agreed budget framework”, said Henrik Thomsen, head of CA Immo Berlin.

Matthias Heck, CFO of Steigenberger Hotels AG, spoke enthusiastically about the new location in Berlin: “The InterCityHotel at Berlin’s main train station should open its doors in October 2013. With 412 rooms, it will not only be the biggest InterCityHotel, but will also represent the brand’s flagship operation in terms of quality, service and comfort”. It is the third InterCityHotel in the Berlin area. “We are committed to what is still a robustly growing market and the location, right by the main train station of the federal capital, represents an A-list site for us”.

Senate construction director Regula Lüscher said: “This new-build represents an extraordinary concept. The InterCityHotel is the first part of a block in which four buildings, each with a projection or offset of up to 1.5 metres, will correspond and relate to one another. This will give the site its own language, without it having to compete with the railway station. At the same time it will highlight, in relation to other architectural solutions that can be seen in the Europacity, just how diverse the new district will be”.

The architects responsible for the 30-metre-high building are Reichel+Stauth, who based the design on a previously created urban planning concept. It boasts a lavish facade of natural stone. The aim is to achieve DGNB (German Sustainable Building Council) silver certification. As an additional architecture quality assurance procedure, the committee of experts known as the Berliner Baukollegium was also involved.

Property development company CA Immo is acting as developer and investor for the InterCityHotel. The eight-storey building has a basement floor and comprises an above-ground surface area of 19,800 m² (213,125 ft²). For the conference area, ten meeting rooms are planned, all of which can be set up individually. The hotel will be able to offer 70 parking spaces on site. Two commercial units, which do not belong to the hotel, will open up the building to its surroundings and should help to liven up the public space. The overall investment volume runs to some 53 million euros.
 
The shell was built by Wolff & Müller. Hotel consultancy company Feuring has also been involved in the project in an advisory role. CA Immo’s subsidiary omniCon is in charge of construction management.

Europacity is Berlin’s newest district development. It surrounds Berlin’s main train station and comprises an area of around 40 hectares. At the beginning of October the TOUR TOTAL building, the headquarters of oil corporation TOTAL, was opened in the Europacity. The preparatory construction works for another hotel, the Steigenberger Hotel am Kanzleramt, began a few weeks ago. A total of six further companies have acquired sites in the development area of Europacity in order to carry out their own development projects there.