Gwinnerstrasse

Reason for planning
The intention is to transform the Seckbach Commercial Zone into a sustainable commercial park with the support of site and climate management. As a supplement to this, Development Plan no. 558 – Gwinnerstrasse has been prepared. It lays the foundations under planning law for a viable future development of the site. The key objective is to create the basis to upgrade the zone in terms of open-space planning and climate management and in this way reduce the potential for urban planning conflicts.

The challenges relate in particular to an outdated infrastructure (e.g., transportation and IT), wasteland, real estate and property that are only partially used, and conflicts with the surroundings given the incursion of usages that are alien to the zone, such as housing, hospitality outlets, large-scale retail malls, and entertainment venues.

Furthermore, the area has come into the sights of developers and computer center operators and the immense development dynamism this has unleashed is an urgent reason to devise plans that steer and control further relocations to the zone. The increasing location of computer centers here leads, given the large amount of land they need and the related surge in land prices, to classical commercial and industrial production plants having to relocate away as the owners cannot afford the area any longer.

Moreover, the computer centers with their considerable power requirements (approx. 80 percent of the power consumption in the “North Fechenheim / Seckbach Sustainable Commercial Park”) and the to date in part uncontrolled release of heat into the surroundings impact negatively on the urban climate. On balance, these factors trigger a downward spiral that endangers the future viability of the site. Yet precisely the wastelands, vacancies and under-used sections offer great urban planning and ecological development potential that needs to be activated and exploited.

On this basis, we follow the goal of developing the area under planning as a commercial and industrial park with a strong future and securing it against other, competing uses. To this end, a feasibility study was carried out. The study set out to evaluate the diverse list of requirements derived from ecological, economic, and social criteria with a view to actual development of the area. The sites at North Fechenheim and Seckbach were selected as part of an analysis of all available areas within the city limits.

Parallel to devising the urban planning concept, the area under planning was examined in the context of two Federal research programs. First, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) supported the sub-project “Existing Structures have a Future” (ExWoSt Gewerbe). Second, the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) as part of its “Sustainable transformation of urban spaces” grants program supported the sub-project “Green not Gray – Changing commercial parks” (GeWa) with the project title being “Existing structures breathe again – easing the strain on the urban climate in the Frankfurt/Main Sustainable Commercial Park”.

Development district  
The development district is located in the south of the Seckbach district and is about 100 hectares in size. In the north, the development district includes the Gelastrasse housing estate erected in the 1930s and directly abuts the “Seckbacher Ried” nature reserve. In the northwest, west, and southwest, it borders on the nature protection zone “Frankfurt/Main Green Belt and Green Areas, Zone I”. To the southeast is Fechenheimer Woods which is also part of the nature protection zone “Frankfurt/Main Green Belt and Green Areas, Zone II”. To the south of the development district is the Riederwald working-class housing estate built in the 1920s as well as the industrial park to one side of it (Development Plan no. 849). In the east, the development district borders on the Victor Slotosch Strasse Commercial Park (Development Plan no. 390).