That dick

The old fireplace

Das Dick (own spelling: DAS DICK) is a leisure and adventure center in Kollwitzstraße 1 in Esslingen am Neckar .

Building

The 22,000 m² Dick was built in the listed former company building by Friedr. Dick set up in the Weststadt in Esslingen. The company, which emerged from a file cutting company, had used the brick building with the striking 68 meter high chimney from 1889 until it moved to Deizisau in 1997.

The Weststadt industrial area in Esslingen was built on from the middle of the 19th century. The trigger was the connection of the city to the railway network. After numerous businesses had to give up in the decades after the Second World War or, like Friedr. Dick changed location, Weststadt was finally declared a redevelopment area in 1996. The Dick was the first factory site in this industrial area that was redesigned as part of these redevelopment efforts.

The north-west corner of the complex and the interior development fell victim to this transformation into an adventure center, whereas the facades facing Käthe-Kollwitz-, Martin- and Fleischmannstraße remained unchanged. A parking garage was built at the northwest corner of the Dick site. In the middle of the property, which cannot be seen from the outside, a three- to four-storey new building in reinforced concrete frame construction was built into which a diving tower was also integrated. Three cinema halls were built on or above the existing old factory building, additional cinema halls were located in the former boiler house and coal bunker.

deals

Visitors can take advantage of offers from the areas of sport, shopping, education, services, entertainment and gastronomy. The Dick houses, for example, a cinema with nine halls and a total of 1544 seats and, until the end of 2010, also the Esslingen Adult Education Center.

The Dick also has a nine-meter-deep diving tower that visitors can look into. It is the first glass diving tower in Germany. It holds around 280,000 liters of water, which at the time of the diving center had a temperature of 24 ° C.

On March 27, 2004, a world record for permanent underwater table football games was set in the tower. In the spring of 2009, however, the Esslingen diving center, which had operated the diving tower up to this point, changed its location.

economy

The former industrial area is separated from the Esslingen city center by a thoroughfare, the bus station in front of the actual train station and a parking garage. Due to this location, it largely has to do without walk-in customers.

The Dick was initially operated by Weststadt GmbH, which, however, was insolvent in 2001. A year later, Colm-Entertainment AG, which operated the cinema center in Dick under the name MovieDick , also had to file for bankruptcy. After a renovation, the cinema continued to operate under the name Traumpalast . The lease with the adult education center was terminated at the end of 2010 after it became known that the room situation was perceived as unsatisfactory. The diving center, which moved out of the Dick in 2009, now uses a location that is closer to the Esslingen motorway exit and, unlike the Dick, offers free parking spaces.