A five-story underground car park with 549 parking spaces and an office and commercial building above – this new building project in downtown Munich, which is currently halted due to the investor’s bankruptcy, is apparently arousing broad interest in the real estate industry. Georg Kreplin, the provisional insolvency administrator of Elements of Infrastructure GmbH, said when asked that he had received “five expressions of interest” for taking over the project on Adolf-Kolping-Straße, which is close to Stachus. However, they have not yet been able to test their “resilience”.
It is obviously even more important for those involved to get the complex construction site up and running again as quickly as possible. “We are currently concentrating on discussions with the current financier,” continued Kreplin. The lender, “a fund under Luxembourg law,” has “a great interest” in getting the work going again. We are also talking to the construction companies involved about this. Only if these discussions fail would the discussions with other interested parties be “intensified”.
In February it became known that the Austrian real estate company Imfarr had sent its subsidiary Elements of Infrastructure into bankruptcy. In recent years, Imfarr has taken on several large real estate projects in Munich, virtually in the slipstream of René Benko’s Signa Group. In the meantime, Imfarr has apparently run into serious problems – similar to Signa.
There used to be an above-ground parking garage where the new building is to be built on Adolf-Kolping-Strasse. The property belongs to the city of Munich, which has granted it to private users under leasehold until 2091; This leasehold was sold to Imfarr a few years ago.
The insolvency also raises the question of whether the city will take back the property with the agreed reversion clause. The opposition city council faction of the CSU/Free Voters recently submitted a motion demanding that the city “take over the area and develop it further either itself or together with a seriously financed partner.” Such a new award should only take place after an expert appointed by the city council has examined and approved the financing, writes CSU city councilor Winfried Kaum in the application.
The provisional insolvency administrator Kreplin confirms that they are in “regular communication” with the city of Munich, but so far it has primarily been about safety issues on the construction site. From his point of view, a takeover by the city is not a particularly plausible scenario, “especially if guaranteed completion is to be negotiated with other developers and construction companies.”
There is currently a standstill at the construction site on Adolf-Kolping-Strasse.
(Photo: Sebastian Krass)
The city itself is keeping a low profile. The municipal department responsible for real estate matters also wrote in a statement about a “regular exchange” with Kreplin. The report does not go into details about the project. It simply writes that after insolvency there are “different options” as to “how to proceed within the framework of a leasehold contract. Which path is taken here depends on the progress of the negotiations.” Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD), to whom the city council proposal from the CSU is formally addressed, explains through his spokeswoman that he has nothing to add to the information from the municipal department.
But one thing is already clear: even if construction work continues soon, it will still take a long time to complete. So far, “part of the pit” has been dug for the underground car park, explains insolvency administrator Kreplin. In total, the pit will be 25 meters deep – an enormously complex project on the site, which is closely surrounded both above ground and below ground. “We are currently assuming possible completion at the end of 2027,” writes Kreplin.
When asked whether it made sense to continue the project in the form previously planned, he had a clear answer: “I think it is an exciting and future-oriented concept that should be implemented in this form.” The parking garage has been planned and “implementation of the concept is also in the interest of the state capital of Munich.”