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GERMAN CENTER IS A CASTLE OF COMMERCE

By Brannon Boswell

History, high culture and modern commerce merge at ECE Projektmanagement's Schloss-Arkaden center in Braunschweig, a north Germany city of 245,000 that was once a powerful duchy ruled by Heinrich the Lion. The center is equal parts museum, palace and shopping center, with 30,000 square meters (322,900 square feet) of retail space leased to the likes of H&M, supermarket Rewe and electronics chain Saturn, and 139,900 square feet dedicated to such cultural institutions as the city archives and the public library. All of this is housed in Heinrich the Lion's restored palace, complete with medieval frieze and a 70-foot-high facade.

World War II bombing decimated Braunschweig's royal palace, and the city tore down the ruins in 1960, burying 600 pieces of natural stone from the structure to use for later reconstruction. In 2003 the city gave ECE and its partner, Credit Suisse Asset Management, permission to redevelop the property, convert it for retail use and connect it to the public transportation network. Work began in the summer of 2005, and the project opened its doors in 2007, with three levels of space fronted by the original facade.

After digging up the palace remains, the developers brought in stonemasons to create 8,200 sandstone blocks. These new blocks have a slightly different color than the original stone, which allows the viewer to distinguish the original and the new pieces.

The retail tenants are not all national chains. Many are mom-and-pop shops. The developers say Schloss-Arkaden's mix of large and small tenants helps set the center apart from its suburban rivals. Schloss-Arkaden draws from a trade area of about 1 million and contains an underground parking garage and adjacent parking decks with 1,700 spaces. Such accessibility and originality have helped make the downtown even more of an attraction for suburbanites, says Lord Mayor Gert Hoffmann. “This ECE project has allowed us to reconstruct our palace and to assemble in it some of the town's main cultural institutions under one roof,” Hoffmann said. “Aside from this, the town center has regained a distinct urban design quality and its identity-generating effect for the former state of Braunschweig.”