What can you do with an empty department store? 

Easy answer: Turn them into real life Mario Kart tracks

Have a look at the Jupiter project in Hamburg. They converted a department store into a place of art, community and startups. They even built a drone racetrack in there. As a city planer (not working in the field) I find this amazing.

My local council knocked an uninspiring post-war department store down to replace it with an uninspiring store block with expensive, over-large housing on top. Hope Hanau gets it right, maybe we can take a leaf out of their book next time :)

Well done. I live in Wiesbaden, which struggles with the same issue: an empty and thus useless Kaufhof building

Turn it into a datacenter. Department Stores generally have decent-ish fire suppression and okay-ish air conditioning and pretty OK power grid connections. Now all they need is some thick fiber runs to Frankfurt am Main, which is right next door, and they can open a decent data center for low cost.

Essen had a empty store building and needs a new library. Magical things happend, and they will use the old building.

Oh boy, Hanau... I lived in a city next to Hanau for 12 years and moved away 5 years ago. The City center was a bit odd, because it wasn't really in the middle of the city, there was just the Central Train Station, which also was far away (for walking). So the shops there were always struggling except Saturn, now MediaMarkt. But it's good, that they try to transform the Building into something new. I wonder, when they close the Galeria here in Würzburg and what will happen to it. Our city seems to kill the culture here sadly...

After far too long in Germany, I cannot recall all the dead shops, large and small. That's not counting all the pubs that have perished. And it's precisely the same in the UK. I never visited Hanau because nobody suggested that it was worth visiting.

They should put their public (that the city hopefully has) inside such an important building in a central location. That could offer a "third place" that don't expect you to spend money, around all these other quite sensible ideas. I like especially the plans to have a venue for public events. Maybe also add some maker spaces and public workshops. That would create a genuine creative space that could revive the area around it and also draw startups and companies into the office space around, that are attracted to such an environment, which again will help gastronomy and other small businesses. The department store as the magnet that draws all the people into the cities is a thing of the past that probably won't return in this way. But that doesn't mean, that there aren't any other kinds of magnets that can increase the sojourn quality.

In Berlin, the branch of Kaufhof at Ostbahnhof was closed years ago, and then the building was converted into an office building, rented by Zalando and then (partially) sub-let to other companies, as during the Pandemic it turned out they don't need as much office space. It's quite nice, I worked there for a while.

My hometown Lünen had the same problem with a Hertie building, it now looks really good, after most of the space was turned into flats.

This, unfortunately, is happening everywhere, as many UK high streets and city centres are suffering. I look forward, though, to seeing your regular updates on this Hanau project. 🙂

If it's any consolation, the cemetery where the Brothers Grimm are buried (and where my mother is buried too) is beautiful (Alter St. Matthäus-Kirchhof). It's in a quiet corner of Berlin-Schöneberg. Okay, except for the S-Bahn line next door.

I dunno, I think it's fitting that the home town of the Grimm brothers looks... grim.

3:29 Pedantry: Austria has a "Parlament", not a "Bundestag".

Housing on the upper floors, and the plan for the top floor, ground floor, and basement are solid.

Hanau has it easy peasy with just one former department store. Here in Berlin we have at least one in each district. And on top of that a tonne of huge shopping malls to boot.

Super interesting and great from a German perspective. When I lived in Frankfurt, there were two department stores, a Galleria and Kaufhof. The Kaufhof has closed (and replaced with a budget clothes store) and whilst the Galleria, I think, is still open (and expanded in the last years), it has become less of a department store over the years. You used to be able to buy electronics there, CDs etc, but it's pretty much now mostly a clothes store with extra departments for kitchen, linen, cosmetics and baggage - but at least some departments. (oh and the wonderful food sections) When I moved to Manchester in 2016 there were 5 department city centre stores compared to Frankfurt's 2. Selfridges, House of Fraser, BHS, Debenhams and Harvey Nicholes. Of that Selfridges, BHS and Harvey Nicholes didn't have many departments either, but at least Debenhams and House of Fraser still had a few extras including electronics & furniture. There were of course plenty earlier department stores like Lewis's and such that are long gone, and the Lewis's building is now the Primark I think, so no longer a department store but a bit clothing one. Now we've lost BHS and Debenhams. The BHS store may still be empty... who knows, it was in a weird almost underground location. The Debenhams is being renovated, keeping it's wonderful art deco look into small retail shops on the lower floors with offices on the rest. House of Fraser is supposed to be converted to offices as well, which probably means it will lose it's amazing glass brick walls since offices will need real windows. Just a pity we don't have a John Lewis in the city centre. We have two in the suburbs of Manchester, but John Lewis is a real, proper department store with a lot of departments. You can still get all the stuff from say Galleria, but they also have a TV, HiFi, Computer departments, as well as furniture department where you can pretty much fit out your house, including white goods department and even kitchen design. You can find an outdoor department with BBQ's and garden stuff including gazebos and summer houses, or a blinds department. It's really quite staggering in today's "department store" equivalents... although, John Lewis are also having problems, so maybe this will change too... :(

Same situation in Iserlohn: An old, abandoned Karstadt building adjacent to a central square. The city bought the building even before Karstadt decided to leave. The city decided to completely tear it down, so we just have an empty lot there now. There are ideas to put a new multistory building there, with shops, restaurants, a media library, living, and probably rooms for the city. Right across this lot, there is the new town hall, which is going to be demolished in the near future (as all workers will temporarily move to an old school, and some point to a "new new town hall" which will be built somewhere, sometime. However, the city is not at all bathing in money, so we will see when any of these building projects will actually start in the future.

It's a similar situation in my corner of the UK. The town has lost all three department stores, the grey concrete shopping centre is empty. Being England everyone blames the council for everything including spending money trying to make the place better.

As a town planner here in the uk, this is very interesting to me - thank you :) In the uk of course, there are great piles of Debenhams department stores languishing in big towns and there’s a lot of thought going in by local councils as what can be done…

Really a complex and difficult Story: Thank you very much for picking it up!🙂👍

Having the power to change the like count from 999 to 1 thousand is special.

Sell things youd usually not order online, mostly groceries. Especially farmers goods. Sell local things as well, just like Japans outskirt towns survive, bring in people through town unique things like, specific cuisine from that area, again fruits veggies, meat etc that only comes from local sources and such. Libraries, these days barely existing anymore but bring in Libraries that are free to use with the new EID (so that thing finally has a use), make it have wifi and computers for the public to use.

I don't know about Hanau, but judging from my area, what's really needed are non-commercial meeting spaces. Every club that's between "fits into someone's living room" and "has enough members to rent a building" is struggling with this. Even groups that would fit into a living room are always looking for spaces to meet unless one of the members lives somewhere the others can get to easily. In the past, many restaurants had back rooms you could get for "one drink per person" when they weren't used for something else. But those are long gone. And about the operating cost...as the city owns the building outright, they could rent out space for a bistro-style restaurant and, instead of charging rent, charge "operate the community space".

I'm getting old and I find myself thinking about old shops with competent shopping assistants with a small tear in my eye.

Id just turn it into a warehouse full of bananas. Bananaland. Bananas. Bananas...

Make it a one-stop day visit. Have a permanent immersive exhibition, think TeamLabs or something like instagram-museum, a place to take selfies and post them in social media to keep visitors coming, give a Hanau twist, use the Grimm brothers tales and folklore but make it modern. This could be on the first floor, on the ground places restaurants, bakeries, ice cream parlors for the hungry visitors, underground can be supermarkets for the locals (this is popular im cities like tokio and london), make use of the roof as a 360° deck platform with a garden/greenery, a place to hang out, maybe even a roof top bar. If there is more levels to this building then one could think of cinema/gym or stores. In order to make such places lively there's gotta be a reason to go there.

My city has the same issue. An ex Karstadt building that is just staning there crumbleing apart. The city wants to buy it to tear it down and build a park there. But the american investors don't want to sell it. Nobody knows what use they have for a building that is crumbling in a crumbling city, but they are really keen on keeping it and letting it rot.

Personally, I would try to renovate everything into apartments and coffee shops, but this is not that easy with most department store or mall spaces left over in this time of re-imagination of our city centres. Although not for everybody, many people want to live in a central location. With the money available, turn it into a great public space: ***A MODERN LIBRARY*** with great public facilities for the people in the city centre to enjoy a non commercial space. I don't know whether Hanau has a city centre library, but I would Imagine a mall could supply with great wide spaces, just punch in some windows for more natural light. Inspiration for it could be something like the Oodi library in Helsinki. Although a new build and not in the most central spot, it creates pull because it offers more than books, it has reading and study spaces, 3D printing capabilities, textile work stations, recording studios for sound and video... it creates a real community space. I think that is what these city centres could use instead of department stores no one uses.

Sounded kinda eerie to hear the same names involved that have reduced a very traditional department store in my closest city , Basel, to a gaping hole in the ground with nobody really knowing what will happen next.

Big data , technology etc are by design tend to benefit large businesses. Hate it, but no option

love these vidoes

In a district of Vienna they had knocked down a decrepit shopping mall and replaced it with appartments (that have shops in the groundfloor zone). Actually it did it to two of these, funnily enough they are even on the same block

The old BHS in Glasgow is now a multiplex cinema plus several eateries alongside several other entertainment venues like an arcade and bowling alley. Unfortunately, the even larger Debenhams just next to it is now also empty with little prospect of such a future.

Our big Kaufhof Store in the city is about to close. They thought of building flats for poor people, but the rent minimum would be way too high for them to actually do this. It's right in the city centre, they can't change it to living spaces because of the minimum rent for this place

Gutes Video

Community Centres. Libraries, gyms, swimming pools, Climbing gyms, something for the community.

At the pedestrian areas in the central, renting a store also became incredible expensive. And it's made more an more hard to get there by car to better get the stuff home you bought. So you better drive to the big shops in the business areas outside the town. In our pedestrian area (like 500m long and like just one street) in the central useful stores are closing and maybe a short time later, like the 100th Döner-Imbiss, the 50th 1EUR shop or the 20th finger-nail-shop comes up...

One influencing factor is probably how much money the customers spend on purchases and services. For example, in Finland, consumer spending dropped significantly during the pandemic and has fallen rapidly since then, so that the Finnish government has asked Finnish citizens to spend more money to keep the economy and economic growth going. However, time will tell whether consumption will increase when prices and living costs have risen and will continue to rise due to inflation, but people's incomes will not and they state that they don't have more money to spend than what they already have.

Not neccessarily a department store, but a local Real with some smaller stores sharing the building got demolished. And replaced with a Kaufland. We now have two. The old one is better. Considering how dead my town is, I am surprised it got replaced by something.

I first thought this would be about Heidelberg. Exactly the same problem

Heidelberg also has a big Galeria in Bismarckplatz (one of the main squares and central nodes of the public transport system) that closed in late 2023 and is now empty, I wonder what will happen with the building. The other Galeria in the Hauptstraße however is doing okay, as far as I can see (even tho I only go to the Go Asia there, to be fair).

In the USA closed Walmarts have been changed into schools, libraries and what they are planning here

As a city planning student, I'm actually currently writing a paper about this :D

Fine Arts all the way. Permanent expositions, auctions, selected venues to serve culinary needs, probably shows or events (though pricier to set-up and with often risky but low reward instead of just loaning some space to an artist). When struggling goes down, capacity to create inherently obsolete but enjoyable stuff arises. And so is the number of people who value those efforts and I'll prefer those class of people over a bunch of tourists trying to fulfil their hedonistic needs as much as possible in the pseudonimity of a strange place all the time! Exalted artsy people flocked in a spacious empty building for most of their visit is a thing even a small city could handle without startling the natives too much.

We got this beautiful Ex-Karstadt art nouveau building in Görlitz, that has been in investment limbo for around 20 years now. You might know it as the foyer of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Would be nice, though, to have it do something useful again. The latest plans want to connect it to the mall next door to give some upper class shopping experience or whatever. We will see what comes from that

The insane thing is they still don't lower the rents on shop store fronts. I know a restaurant in a pretty dead shopping street that had to pay 50% more rent from one month to the next, so they just moved to another place.

Ha! Aschaffenburg still has its Kaufhof, which is rather uninspiring in its own right, but I would not consider the town's shopping district too badly hit - yet. It is definitely not quite on the level of previous decades, and it might be failing overall, but I still like the centre ... something I cannot say for Hanau, decent shopping or not.

Reutlingen is in the same boat with ours. A real shame too. When we first arrived here in 2016, it was incredibly convenient to have so much under one easily accessible roof, especially as we didn't yet speak the language.

The problem with those huge department stores is that it has natural light only at the window fronts - so not much will be usable as office space or classrooms - they are illegal when they only have artificial lighting 24h.

The industrial flea market/food court style is exactly what people call "instagramable" if you put design elements in. If it's sustainable though..

The bankruptcies of Karstadt and Galeria were intentional. They were in prime locations and Benko tried to get them out by raising the rent rediculously high.

About 15 years ago a shopping center several miles from me was going downhill due to it's weird layout constructed on a hillside. The owners could not afford to make all the required improvements to make the two floor shopping center accessible to the handicapped. The city decided to buy it and got one of the large local hospitals to create medical offices on the second floor while the lower level remained for retail. Surprisingly it worked. The area is now a hub of activity with numerous retail and restaurant establishments surrounding the shopping center. Now another shopping center just a couple of miles from me has fallen into disrepair. So the city decided to buy that shopping center as well thinking they could revive it the same way the 15 year old shopping center was invigorated. The city contacted the same hospital to set up medical offices in part of the shopping center. The hospital initially was enthusiastic about the property. But a few months ago the hospital decided it could not afford to set up another medical center. Currently the city is doing some work at the shopping center, but what their actual goal for the outcome for this property is unknown.

Rarely comment on but just moved the Hanau and I just love how walkable the city centre is - tons of cheap parking and excellent transit connections unlike many dead town centres Hanau feels alive. The mayor has my vote in the next election - he's done a fantastic job of managing the city (especially compared to where I lived before) As for its poor reputation - I think that is due to the fact it's heavily Turkish. Off topic but it's also why I prefer living here over Munich. Frankfurt is very car friendly (trade off is noise though. And before you complain 99% og German drive. Edit: it's not clear from the video but thankfully the shell is barely noticeable. It's kind of tucked away, you wouldn’t¡t notice it right away.

Lot's of nice ideas but according to the rumors, looks like ours in Darmstadt will be demolished and a new hotel will be built.

I still remember when we had a "Hertie" department store, which was great at the time... and got later bought up by Karstadt. shortly after that things sadly went downhill :/

my hometown is in a similar struggle with our former kaufhof. two(!) empty multi storey buildings no one really knows what to do with

Burlington, Vermont put a high school in the old Macy's (formerly Filene's) building. It's only a temporary relocation though, while a new school is built on the site of the old one (which was contaminated with PCBs).

We have two (almost) empty department stores in Lübeck, too. There are plans to use some of the space for additional clasrooms for a nearby school.

A little bit off topic: Würzburg. It doesn't have a shopping center (Kaufhof does not count) and yet shops there are regularly empty, change the "content" (and then often become cell phone shops or cheap bakeries or food stalls) and that's been the case since the early 2000s... then I'd rather go to Aschaffenburg with it's "mall"🤔

The parent company might have folded - but if there was a future for department stores another business would have snapped the stores up. Even before the pandemic, or online retail, it was hard to see the point of the department store. Massive shops selling everything under the sun. Sure, they had cafes and toilets - of course in Germany you had to pay to use them :) Good luck to Hanau, but where I live we had two department stores on opposite corners of the main shopping street that closed within a year of each other. That was 3-4 years ago. and it's a prosperous area. We've had plans to convert the ground floor to niche market areas, GP surgeries, other small businesses, with residential above. We've had contractors making a lot of noise working them. But still nothing. And both buildings are non-descript 1960s blocks, so no worry over historic status.

Markt Zwei seems good, sounds nice and can be pronounced easily in several languages. Even if botched by people who speak romance languages like me.

In my Hometown they managed to keep a Galeria Kaufhof and a Karstadt next to each other, Til this day. Both Stores are still operating and survived all "mishaps" until now, both are kind of big and in the middle of the centre... So If both stores close at the same time.... So that's something to worry about. Having this big empty spaces in the centre of town may cause a big blow on the attractivity of the whole inner city. On the other Hand my hometown IS a cultural hub, and quiet wealthy, struggling with high rents and a lack of housing... So there are a lot of opportunities in this buildings.

I was last in Aschaffenburg in late 2015, so it's sad to see what's become of it since then - but the High Street in my city here in the UK has gone downhill even more in that time.

How often do they think people are going to do things on a stage in an old department store? That will just be an empty space in the building 99% of the time.

Hopefully it works!

Okay, from some of the comments here I can take that the situation must be similar in parts of the UK. But, when I visit there, as a German I am still puzzled by the number of department store chains that can still be found in London. Sure, there is the playground of the rich and wealthy, plus thousands of tourists, but I am still wondering how so many different chains can keep up their department stores - and they must have branches in other British cities, too. Germany has basically no other department store chain left other than Galeria Karstadt / Kaufhof (and aligned KaDeWe group), which is now victim of the Signa bankruptcy.

Honestly they did exactly what I would have expected. Personally, I'd probably go hard on the fact it's now publicly owned. It should be for the appeal of the area, the benefit of the people, not just revenue. Permanent shopfronts for small businesses rented out at cost, a daycare, and a park on top with food stalls, rather than an overlording company controlling the whole roof as their premises. The stage is a very nice idea, and the middle sections could surely be used for community spaces. Perhaps a library, public open office space?

Reminds me a lot of the city I live in, Halle. Similar story. Huge Galeria Kaufhof right in the middle of the city next to the beautiful Marktplatz, now sitting there totally empty and from what I've heard will be converted to office spaces?

I visited the Kaufhof store in Munich, it was huge, shame to think it’s gone. I think Munich at the time had four department stores?

nice

we had 2 huge kaufhof in few hundret meters apart from each other in a relativ small (250.000) city. one was emty for years then another company went in and now is out again its emty again, while now also the other kaufhof closes so we have two huge buildings emty in the middle of the city ... and there are a few more of this huge ones if they go emty too ... damn

Sad to say, this is not peculiar to Germany. Sheffield where I’m originally from lost its main department store a couple of years ago ( a branch of John Lewis) the building is still vacant and has like Galerria Ksufhof been bought buy the City Council.

Instagramability is the bane of our existence.

Our city is planning to cut down a lot of old trees in our central park to build a new library. They don't know what to do with most of the space in the old one (except for the ground floor), there are letters in the newspaper asking if the library really needs more space, because of ebooks and if we can't just use one of the empty buildings to extend the existing library. But the move on, because it is already planned and probably because the mayor promised the building sector to do this. 😞

Why not just tear it all down and get some people to build up some small, "hip" Restaurants there that have minergy houses and the rest could be a park for children, bikers and pedestrians and some trees etc.?😊

We got two of those here... One of them has a sort of exhibition space on the ground floor now. The other one is still empty.

I think it is important to devide struggle of small shops and department stores. First reopen quite quickly and one shop simply gets replaced with another similar, fashion becomes fashion, food turns into food. Big stores always have to be a part of a big city plan. It may be a rather costly investment, but definetely worthy. Take town of Aachen for example: at some point it had four department stores with couple shopping centers not quite the proper size to count as a department store (for the population of 250 thousands). One is Galeria Kaufhof which is too big to go down and located to central to undergo full rebuild, it only got a bit rearranged, another Aquis Plaza - a long awaited modern glass monster, which kind of helped the demise of two smaller and older brothers, drawing shops and customers to itself. Now, to the interesting part: one of these two malls kept the local eesentials like grocery shop and gym, but otherwise got occupied by town and governmental services. Another got closed earlier and is undergoing the takeover by community college and library. What happens to the older buildings of said college and town officials is another story, as they have to be renovated or rebuilt anyway, but I fully support this continous town rejuvenation by moving places. Heck, in past 10 years I moved 6 times myself and will likely do it again by the end of this year.

Also miss the Imbiss! How much is the property worth? What, roughly, are the taxes for that size of floor space?

They should invite Rabarber-Barbara to open a bar.

This is happening everywhere.

Indoor Playground and Laser Tag ! :D I dont get why this is not a thing

refugee camp for sure - always needed.

Wait what? They want to put classrooms in the same building as a club and a bar? Hope they build an elementary school inside there, so that the children already can be trained to be faithful (alcohol) consumers, lol. They migh just put in business offices or classrooms for some evening classes or seminars at best, but surely nothing for children.

So a human-sized Croydon \m/

So Rene' Benko is Austrias "little Trump". He bought the stores, transferred the high value downtown land to a seperate company, made the warehouses pay enormous rents to this company and bankrupted the warehouse chain. I wonder why cities fell for that again and again. And now the medium sized cities have to come up with a solution. In Frankfurt, the Galeria Kaufhof Hauptwache is doing fine, they have specialized to serve asian travelling groups long before covid. They leave with a lot of high value fashion and cosmetics 😅

So, Galeria-Kaufhof is the Kmart-Sears of Germany, then.

Many cities are confronted with the same problem. Not only Kaufhof is going to die, but the belief to just go on in the shopping aereas as always, will fail due to Internet shopping. Only very attractive cities and cities with innovative ideas will succeed. Btw already having a name for a place before knowing what exactly is going to happen there is not a bad sign. It is quite common because the Project needs a name and a concept to attract partners, stores, and so on. I’m sure there are other signs for the typical Stadtrat-thinking. :)

Hanau is also the birthplace of..... Rudi Voeller! (Do I need to say sorry for this? Something tells me I need to say sorry for this.....😉)

€25M for a property no-one else wants? Whatever happened to supply and demand?

This isn't even a German, nor European problem - North America has the identical problem with large department stores going bankrupt (or "right-sizing" their fading empires) which leaves large empty holes in what (usually) were once prime shopping districts.

As a German born, the main reason I’m gonna leave this place besides how our art is dead is the way this places looks now.

McGriddles !!!

For the record the Austrian Bundestag is called Nationalrat :-) Otherwise I'm ashamed for my countryman !

In verschiedenen Städten soll die Stadtbücherei einziehen.

Novel concept, I know, but how about: Affordable housing

That reminds me of plans for the smaller 2nd Karstadt building in Lübeck (yes, that company is still Karstadt for me, I don't care about that long name). The city bought it a few years ago because the schools in the city center need more space. Now I wonder what will happen with the way larger main building next to it that closed earlier this year

6:00 They are trying something different, they have an ambitious schedule and they put a nondescript city on the map. Is it really so embarrassing if the project fails?

6:06 HU is the abbreviation for Hauptuntersuchung (general inspection), the legally required biennial* technical inspection of motor vehicles and trailers. How could one come up with the idea of proposing this abbreviation as a name for a multi-use house? (* there are exceptions)