Research projects

Initial situation and objective
Our inner cities are characterized by a profound change in use, which no longer only affects supposedly weaker cities, but also the city centers of metropolitan areas. As a result of three insolvencies, the Galeria Group's department store portfolio has more than halved since 2020. With its high density of cities, North Rhine-Westphalia is particularly affected by these closures. The declining demand for retail space necessitates a fundamental architectural and functional restructuring of the properties to adapt them to a changed inner-city usage structure. This requires significant investment and careful curation of the mix of uses and leads to significantly longer vacancy and transformation periods. At the same time, the impulse effect of the buildings and their vacancy puts substantial pressure not only on the property owners, but also on the municipalities affected. The challenges are also increasingly affecting other large department store companies, which are reducing sales space in view of the shift in sales to online retail, and shopping centers, which are characterized by rising vacancy rates and rental difficulties.
The aim of the project is to provide local authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia affected and threatened by department store closures and shopping center vacancies with knowledge on how to deal with vacant large-scale retail properties. To this end, the aim is to analyze how new points of attraction can be created in inner cities.

Approach
The project comprises the ongoing monitoring of the closure and transformation of department stores in Germany and the identification and analysis of good practice examples for the (non-retail) conversion of properties in Germany and neighboring European countries. The transfer of knowledge takes place via scientific and practice-oriented publications as well as the newsletter neu.genutzt. News on the conversion of large retail properties, which was specially developed for affected municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia. In the interests of information transfer and mutual networking, needs-based experience exchange formats are planned in coordination with the MHKBD NRW and other relevant multipliers in North Rhine-Westphalia. Reports on dealing with (difficult) property owners as well as practical experience from project development, event and literature recommendations round off the mutual exchange. In addition to dealing with department stores, a separate database on the situation of shopping centers in NRW will be compiled and initial national and international research will be carried out on possible conversion concepts for shopping centers that are no longer marketable.