The Vegesack pedestrian zone is considered to be the most important retail location alongside the city center and the large shopping malls. (Christian Kosak)
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What development prospects does the retail sector in Bremen have outside of the city center? A revised center and local supply concept (ZNK) for the urban area should provide information on this. In 2009, the citizens of the city first adopted such a paper, but a lot has happened in the meantime. In the businessworld there are new trends in content, signs of concentration and changed sales concepts; online providers are also taking more and more market shares from traditional stationary retail – at least in some product segments.
It was necessary to react to these developments, which is why the building authority, together with the Dortmund urban planning office Stadt + Handel, has launched a new edition of the ZNK, which is expected to be approved by the city’s citizens this month. The document is not intended to be a non-binding recommendation. It becomes part of the legal framework for the approval of retail projects.
If an investor in the building authority inquires about possibilities for a project in a certain location, the clerks will consult the new ZNK and decide on the basis of the spatial delimitations and product lists whether the business can be opened at the desired location. “We would be negative if the location is not properly identified,” says Jan Dierk Stolle, who worked on the paper for the Senator for Construction.
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The center and local supply concept classifies the existing business locations into four categories. In addition to the city center and the two special district centers Vegesack and Viertel, it lists 13 “simple” district centers and 18 local supply areas. The local supply center represents the lowest level of retail trade close to the district. It can be reached by pedestrians in a maximum of ten minutes and covers the basic needs of food, drugstore items and other everyday products. In district centers, the range is more diverse and also more extensive in terms of quantity. Customers would also find an optician, an electronics store or a household goods retailer there, supplemented by high-quality restaurants and service providers such as banks. The catchment area of the district center is correspondingly larger.
In the new edition of the ZNK, the strengths and weaknesses of the existing district centers are clearly addressed. According to the experts, the business locations in Vegesack, Huchting and the district do justice to their function – at least in terms of the sheer size of the retail space. It is different in Neustadt, Horn-Lehe, Osterholz, Woltmershausen and Hemelingen. With a total sales area of less than 7,500 square meters each, “they must first be assessed critically with regard to their supply function in a large city like Bremen”, say the experts from Stadt + Handel. They see a lot of catching up to do there. Another example: Blumenthal. The town center there is certified as having a “lack of urban quality”. Due to the concentration on the specialist market segment, its current offer “does not correspond to the function and equipment of a district center”. The aim must be to strengthen the historical center and to relocate assortments such as clothing, household items / furnishing accessories, medical articles and entertainment electronics.
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At the level of the local supply centers, three previous locations in the new ZNK are being sorted out because they have turned out to be too weak and not very capable of development. From the point of view of the experts, it no longer makes sense to develop the Gottfried-Menken-Straße area (Neustadt) as a retail location. “There is no shopping atmosphere”, so the verdict of the experts. They attest something similar to the Emmaplatz / H.-H.-Meier-Allee area in Schwachhausen and Mahndorfer Heerstraße. In contrast, two areas in Vegesack and Huchting have developed positively. In Bremen-Nord, retail and service offerings have increased around the Georg-Gleistein-Strasse / Hammersbecker Strasse intersection, and there are similar approaches in Huchting on Kirchhuchtinger Landstrasse. According to the ZNK, these new cores have a future as local supply centers.
From Jan Dierk Stolle’s point of view, the specific benefit of the ZNK is also to point out gaps in the retail offer. “We now want to start talks with larger discounters, but also with smaller players, in order to find out how their expansion plans can be brought into line with our ideas,” announced Stolle. A specialist dialogue on the future of local supply is also planned. This also involves emerging sales models such as delivery services.
The Chamber of Commerce was closely involved in drawing up the center and local supply concept. Your retail expert Karsten Nowak thinks it’s a success. Authorities, politicians, investors and project developers have standards at hand, “on the basis of which projects, locations and development prospects can already be assessed in principle,” says Nowak. Nevertheless, each individual case will have to be dealt with in future when retail settlements are set up. With the completely renewed ZNK there is now a “reliable and transparent basis”.
The devil is in the details
The details of the center and local supply concept (ZNK) were fought intensely last year. Because not everything that the urban planners consider sensible and desirable is shared by the local politicians in the advisory boards.
In Vegesack, for example, there has been a desire for many years to upgrade Lindenstrasse as a retail location and to allow a supermarket there. That is exactly how long the building authority has been resisting it. It was not until November that the advisory board unanimously renewed its demand against the building department.
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In Borgfeld, city planner Jan Dierk Stolle even had to fend off accusations of ignorance. There are controversial plans there to build a small retail center with a drugstore, an Aldi branch and a smaller hardware store including an underground car park on the current hardware store site.
From the point of view of the building authorities, however, the area does not belong to the center of Borgfeld and therefore cannot be a location for retail development. For the time being, the topic was decoupled from the center and local supply concept. A so-called in-depth study should provide information on whether the project can be reconciled with the ZNK. In the new year, Borgfeld’s advisory board policy will deal with the results of the study.
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