The End of a Shopping Era: Primark’s Departure from Berlin

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• Primark closes its first branch in Berlin
• The closure will take place on March 25th
• The store in the Schloss-Straßen-Center once established a shopping era

Berlin. The end of Primark in the Schloss-Straßen-Center on Walther-Schreiber-Platz is now coming faster than expected. The lease actually runs until April 30th. But as a company spokeswoman confirmed on request, the branch will finally close on Saturday, March 25th. “Customers can shop until 8 p.m. that day,” says Primark. No sale is planned, the remaining goods will be distributed to the other branches. Primark still has three branches in Berlin: in the Gropius Passagen in Neukölln, in the City West on Joachimsthaler Strasse and on Alexanderplatz.

The closure one month before the end of the lease has a reason. “We need some time to hand over the store empty,” said the Primark spokeswoman. So the timing is planned. After all, the employees still get their money for a month. “The social plan agreed with the employee representatives includes the continued payment of wages for the employees affected by the closure until the end of the lease in April 2023,” said the spokeswoman.

The first Primark branch opened in Berlin eleven years ago

The closure of Primark not only affects the Schloss-Straßen-Center (SSC), which has to look for a new anchor tenant. No successor is publicly known yet, but according to the first indications, a large food discounter could move to the ground floor. But it will also affect Steglitzer Schloßstraße. Eleven years ago, the first Berlin Primark branch was opened on Walther-Schreiber-Platz, which is in Friedenau but is always counted as part of Steglitzer Schloßstraße. At the start, Steglitz was actually the new shopping hotspot, especially for young girls who arrived in groups on the U9 and were able to shop at the Irish cheap textile chain on two floors.

The really big rush was suddenly over when another branch opened on Alexanderplatz in Mitte two years later. After new shops in City West and in Neukölln began to attract customers, Steglitz was written off. A year ago, the discounter reacted to the increasingly empty aisles and cash registers and announced that it would not extend the lease. The reason for this was a routine review, which had come to the conclusion that a lease extension was no longer commercially attractive for Primark. Therefore, the lease expires on April 30, 2023.

You can read more news from Steglitz-Zehendorf here