Berlin – A few years ago, the State of Berlin sold many of its properties to the highest bidder. But that time is over. Berlin is now buying back space. As the state-owned Berlin Immobilienmanagement GmbH (BIM) announced on Tuesday, the city has acquired four plots of land from Deutsche Bahn (DB) in a package sale. These are green spaces in the Treptow-Köpenick district with a size of around 12,000 square meters. According to BIM, they will “in the future be used, among other things, for compensatory and replacement measures”. Such compensatory measures are necessary for interventions in nature, for example in the case of larger construction projects. Then areas are needed for replacement trees or replacement habitats for reptiles.
According to BIM, the purchase will be financed by the so-called Infrastructure of the Growing City (SIWA) special fund, a financial reserve of the state for projects in the growing city of Berlin. Initially, no information was given about the price. Further purchases are planned according to the information. According to BIM, the aim of the acquisitions is to counteract the country’s shortage of space.
Bahn made its space available transparent
“The state-owned areas are finite,” said BIM managing director Birgit Möhring. “We are all the more pleased about the first joint deal with Deutsche Bahn.” The negotiations for the purchase of additional packages were already in full swing. The focus in the upcoming discussions will be on areas “with development potential”, said Möhring. The purchases of these areas are to be handled by Berliner Bodenfonds GmbH, a subsidiary of BIM.
Finance State Secretary Vera Junker explained that the four areas of the railroad are to become state property this year. The purchase is part of the gradual development of a land reserve. The railway has made its real estate portfolio “completely transparent” to the state of Berlin, said Alexander Kaczmarek, Deutsche Bahn’s representative for Berlin. Areas that will be needed in the future for the expansion of the railway infrastructure have not been sold.