After protracted negotiations, the Hamburger Bahnhof is secured as the location of the National Gallery Berlin. According to an agreement between the federal government and the Austrian real estate company CA Immo Deutschland, a rental agreement with an option to extend is to be concluded for the Museum of Contemporary Art for an initial period of 25 years. After approval by the Board of Trustees of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation as the umbrella organization of Berlin’s state museums, the contract is to be signed in the next few days.
Negotiations between the federal government – represented by the Federal Agency for Real Estate Tasks – and CA Immo have been ongoing since mid-2021. Regardless of this, the State of Berlin is still negotiating with CA Immo about the acquisition of the Rieckhallen through a property swap.
This has given the main building of the Hamburger Bahnhof a huge delay. The memorandum of understanding still applies to the Rieckhallen, according to which an exchange property is to be found for CA Immo. In the last few days, resistance had formed against the proposal submitted to the main committee by Senator for Culture Klaus Lederer.
After that, in exchange for the Rieckhallen, CA Immo should not only get the north-west corner of the Humboldthafen, but also the state-owned property at Invalidenstraße 60. That seemed too much to some politicians, since the property offers up to 60,000 square meters of development space for their own authorities .
Lederer now told the German press agency: “The Hamburger Bahnhof and the Rieckhallen are interdependent and are both extremely important for Berlin as a cultural location.” Berlin is still pursuing the goal of securing the Rieckhallen for the state. “The negotiations are on the right track and we are confident that we will come to a positive conclusion for the state of Berlin.”
