New center of Oberhausen

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New center of Oberhausen, general view (2004). Left foreground: Centro Park amusement park, center: Centro shopping center, left background: multiplex cinema, behind it metronome theater (green roof), center background: the now demolished former electrical steelworks

A former industrial site in the North Rhine-Westphalian city ​​of Oberhausen is known as the New Center and is now used as a leisure and shopping center as well as a location for other commercial, sporting and cultural offers.

The Neue Mitte Oberhausen is based on an urban development concept from the early 1990s. According to this concept, the Neue Mitte Oberhausen is to replace the Gutehoffnungshütte complex as the old industrial core of the city with a new city center. In this way, the old economic monostructure is to be permanently overcome and the grown city and district centers are to be connected to one another in a new way. In addition, the new center of Oberhausen should give the city a new economic orientation as a shopping, leisure and tourism destination as well as a sustainable commercial location.

Voices in the Ruhr area described the New Center as harmful to retail and the centers in Oberhausen and neighboring cities. In 2005, the Higher Administrative Court in Münster had to examine whether the planning was inconsiderate within the framework of norms control actions of some neighboring cities and the district government of Düsseldorf . The court firmly denied this and dismissed the claims.

Sub-areas

May 2009: View from the northeast, on the left the shopping center, above the arena, on the right the amusement park, below right the Sea Life Aquarium at the Heinz Schleusser Marina

The New Center is divided into several sub-areas:

Former sub-areas

Transport links

Neue Mitte stop with nighttime lighting (architecture: Christoph Parade)

There is a direct motorway connection to the A 42 . 14,000 parking spaces are available for cars.

The public transport network in the Oberhausen city area was redesigned for the connection with public transport: by extending a Mülheim tram route, the tram in Oberhausen was opened 28 years after it was closed and about 100 years (1897) after Germany's first municipal tram began operating , reintroduced in the same city.

A former freight railway line leading through the Centro site was converted into a local traffic route that is independent of individual traffic . On this route between Alt-Oberhausen ( main station ) and Sterkrade station , tram and bus lines are bundled in such a way that there are frequent connections (currently every two minutes during business hours). The Neue Mitte stop between the arena and the shopping center is an example of deconstructivism .

development

As part of the structural change in the Ruhr area, a 143- hectare industrial site north of Essener Strasse in Oberhausen  , which had formerly belonged to the Thyssen Group , was wasted . In 1968 Thyssen took over the majority of the shares in the former Gutehoffnungshütte. Operations should be streamlined and thus enable more profits. Since the mid-1980s, the area of ​​the Neue Mitte has only been used to a small extent for operational purposes, and the first demolition work began at the end of 1992 .

In the mid-1980s, considerations were made to upgrade these areas in terms of planning. Efforts were made to use planning resources to counteract the crisis perspective of urban development and to tackle groundbreaking projects to improve the quality of living space - the conception of the Green Center in Oberhausen . This concept was quickly rejected because it would not have created any jobs. So the city of Oberhausen was now looking for investors to use the space again.

At the end of the 1980s there were first plans to develop the area with a huge shopping center. The Canadian investment company Triple Five , essentially a family company of the Ghermezian family , contacted the state government in Düsseldorf in November 1988 in order to discuss a seemingly gigantic project proposal. The investors wanted to build a leisure and shopping center with 850,000 square meters based on the model of the West Edmonton Mall on the industrial site of around 100 hectares, which has already been largely closed by Thyssen . A diverse usage concept was planned for this center , which included, among other things:

  • a shopping center of 250,000 m² with over 800 shops
  • a leisure center of 92,000 m² with a wave pool, indoor fair, ice rink, sea attraction, cinema complex, casino etc.
  • a conference and exhibition center of 33,000 m²
  • a marina including a hotel complex with 3,000 beds
  • an office center of 90,000 m², consisting of three or four twelve-story office buildings

Concerns from neighboring cities and within the state government led to these plans being rejected.

It was not until 1991, when the political conditions in Düsseldorf were favorable and a British group of investors presented the plan to build a smaller shopping center, integrated into an urban planning concept with facilities for leisure, culture and trade, that a path towards implementation could be taken. The English investor group then acquired part of the site in order to create the nucleus for the new center of Oberhausen with the Centro . After opening in 1996, the Centro shopping and leisure center quickly developed into a crowd-puller with many millions of visitors annually. As an urban entertainment center , it primarily appeals to families and younger visitors from all over North Rhine-Westphalia, other federal states and neighboring countries.

Other Projects

For the area of ​​a former electric steelworks southeast of Osterfelder Strasse, the initial objective was to build a new type of business park with a broad mix of healthcare facilities to expand the new center in Oberhausen under the project name “Zukunftspark O.Vision” . As early as 2005, however, it became apparent that the state of North Rhine-Westphalia could forbid the over-indebted city from investing its own money in the project for reasons of municipal and budgetary supervision. When the state government announced in January 2006 that it did not want to support the project, which was dependent on public funding, those involved in the planning declared that they were looking for a different usage concept for the development of the Neue Mitte Oberhausen in this area.

The land was sold in 2006 by an urban development company to a Northern Irish investor, which so far has not been reflected in urban developments, but rather in the auctioning of construction vehicles and the meanwhile establishment of a branch of a discount chain in the immediate vicinity of the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology indicated that a “big” solution could no longer be expected. The development plan No. 465, which regulates the building rights on the areas of the former electric steelworks and which became legally effective in 2003, was changed in 2008 in order to adapt the level of building use and the development structure to the objective of broader marketing of the areas. The admissibility of the retail trade was not affected; Large-scale retail with relevant effects on centers and supply structures is therefore still excluded under building law. However, on the building plots along Osterfelder Straße, the changed development plan allowed the possibility of building certain amusement facilities, for example amusement arcades . In November 2011, a large arcade, often called “UFO” due to its architectural design, was opened.

For the area between the Rhine-Herne Canal, Marina, Güterbahnlinie and Osterfelder Strasse, there was still the concept of a prefabricated house exhibition with an attached client center as part of the planning for the New Center in Oberhausen in the 1990s. Since the property owner and developer at the time was not able to implement this project, the planners had to develop a new usage concept here too.

In the summer of 2006, the city of Oberhausen decided to use the area for the development of an all-weather and family pool as well as for other leisure and commercial facilities. The planning of the all-weather and family pool was integrated into an urban pool concept, which led to a reorganization of the urban pool landscape with the closure of several outdoor and indoor pools. The so-called “Aquapark” celebrated its topping-out ceremony in April 2009 and was opened in December of that year.

See also

Web links

Commons : Neue Mitte Oberhausen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/oberhausen/grundsteinlege-fuer-ozean-themenpark-und-legoland-am-centro-oberhausen-id7180254.html
  2. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/oberhausen/schnelles-comeback-des-irish-pub-am-centro-oberhausen-unwahrlik-id7458444.html
  3. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.centro.de
  4. ↑ http://www.sendfeld.de/staatsarbeit/oberthemen/neuemitteoberhausen/o4.htm
  5. ↑ a b Basten, Ludger ed. Die Neue Mitte Oberhausen; A major urban development project in the area of ​​tension between politics and planning: 1998
  6. ↑ Canal ship
  7. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/oberhausen/schnelles-comeback-des-irish-pub-am-centro-oberhausen-unwahrlik-id7458444.html
  8. ↑ http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/oberhausen/grundsteinlege-fuer-ozean-themenpark-und-legoland-am-centro-oberhausen-id7180254.html
  9. ↑ Mega-Casino Ufo opens its doors at Centro, derwesten.de , November 8, 2011

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 30 ″  N , 6 ° 52 ′ 36 ″  E