FThe Jens Jonsson butcher’s shop was also affected. The family business from Kassel has been selling the traditional Kasseler cooked sausage since the post-war period. But at some point the landlord in the top location on Wilhelmstraße demanded such a high rent that the company was about to give up the branch.
Christof Nolda (Green Party) is standing in front of the butcher shop and remembers how everything was set in motion. “The administration and city management helped with the search for a location. The boiled sausage was once part of the regular assortment of a Hessian town. There’s almost nothing left of it,” he says.
There is a reason why a Greens municipal building officer is worried about Kassel’s sausage culture: the city center is threatening to bleed dry. In the central locations, between the town hall and Königsplatz, there is still a lot going on even on a dull Corona day in January – despite the obligation to wear masks outdoors.
But the change is visible in the side streets. Up in Wilhelmstraße, a long-established leather goods manufactory has moved out. Right next to it, other shops are unused. In the direction of the main train station, two former branches of the Thiele bakery (“The Hospitable Baker”) are empty. Looking for tenant. Hardly anyone is out and about in the upper half of the famous stairs street, the first real pedestrian zone in the Federal Republic.
In many German cities it looks like the side streets of Kassel City. Retailers and restaurateurs are experiencing the perfect storm: rents have been rising for years, while customers are increasingly ordering online. And now the pandemic is driving the last casual shoppers out of the shopping zones, which have already become more and more similar with their mixture of fashion and restaurant chains. While associations are sounding the alarm, cities like Kassel are looking for ways out and new forms of use for the dying inner city.
From the point of view of Stefan Genth, the general manager of the German Retail Association (HDE), the pandemic policy gives many retailers the rest: “Spontaneous strolling doesn’t work if you first have to queue in front of the shop door to check your vaccination card.”
“Paradigm shift in pandemic policy”
It has not been proven that shopping contributes disproportionately to the incidence of infection. “There needs to be a paradigm shift in pandemic policy,” demands Genth. Many dealers have used up their reserves. And the economic aid would bring little in the long run – because they only covered the fixed costs.
However, the existential crisis cannot be read from the official bankruptcy figures. From January to September 2021 there were 63 insolvency proceedings in the fashion retail sector – a decrease of 40 percent compared to the previous year. But if a shopkeeper simply gives up and closes without filing for bankruptcy at the district court, then he doesn’t appear in the statistics either. Even the HDE doesn’t know how many retailers are throwing in the towel.
Replacements are becoming increasingly difficult to find. “Trade can no longer be replaced by trade everywhere. The corona pandemic is accelerating a development that has long been underway,” said Helmut Dedy, Managing Director of the German Association of Cities, WELT AM SONNTAG. “Growing online trade is making it increasingly difficult for stationary retailers.”
The cities are now demanding an expansion of the federal program “Sustainable Inner Cities and Centers” for the extensive conversion. Instead of the previous 250, 500 million euros are needed for five years. Cities and municipalities would have to bring craftsmen, artists, schools and housing into the centers, Dedy continued. “We need to revitalize inner cities.”
Source: Infographic WORLD
Mayors and city managers are hoping for gastronomy as a new attraction for desolate inner cities. But there is also a mood of crisis there. The German Hotel and Restaurant Association (Dehoga) has just published a survey according to which almost 57 percent of the companies see their existence threatened.
“Guests and hosts alike are annoyed by the regulatory confusion at 2G plus,” says Dehoga CEO Ingrid Hartges. The association criticizes “various exceptions to the testing obligation and technical inadequacies in the various app solutions”. In addition, 46 percent of the establishments report conflicts with guests. In the face of a drop in sales of more than 50 percent, “many companies simply gave up without a word,” says Hartges.
Cafes and restaurants are “the public living rooms” of society. “You could see what happens without them during the nine months of gastronomy lockdown: it is deserted, in the middle of the center.” But she also warns: “If gastronomy is to save the city center now, the real estate industry must follow its course with the high rents change, and municipalities must not make life unnecessarily difficult for companies with too many requirements and fees.”
With the rents, Hartges is addressing a problem that is also affecting city building officer Nolda. “In many cities, including Kassel, there has been an increasing optimization of real estate in the direction of maximizing economic use in the past few decades: what counted was the running meter of shop window space. In some cases, this has meant that you no longer have access to the upper floors from the front,” says Nolda. “There are sometimes adventurous solutions with stairs across the backyard.” That doesn’t correspond to his idea of a lifelike inner city development. He’s trying to counteract it.
For Marion Klemme, urban researcher at the Federal Institute for Building, Urban and Spatial Research, the municipalities are also partly responsible for the misery: “In the planning phase, the city center was left to the retail trade for too long,” she says. “But the real estate industry’s growing interest in yields was also decisive. Only retailers could pay high rents in prime locations – and increasingly only large chain stores.”
Kassel tried early on to help shape the change. Pedestrian zones were rebuilt. A former sports shop converted into a documenta cultural center – the “ruru house”. You talk to the owners. The city center must be more diverse, and the upper floors must be made available for offices and living, says Nolda. “The development plan or building use ordinance make this quite possible. You just have to want it.”
Increasingly, the owners and landlords themselves want to. In view of the threat of vacancies, they have to reduce rents. Like in the butcher shop on Wilhelmstrasse. “The business could stay,” says Nolda. “I think that we will see a concession from the owners more often in the future.”
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