On the heels of its acquisition of a construction project by the main railway station in Frankfurt am Main, Commerz Real, a wholly owned subsidiary of Germany’s Commerzbank, has acquired another complex in the city for their public real estate fund hausInvest. The seller is the Frankfurt-based project development and construction company Adolf Lupp, and the purchase price was not disclosed. When it opens, the hotel will be under the Novum brand.
The acquisition was structured as an asset deal in the form of a forward funding. This means that Commerz Real has initially bought the plot of land with an obligation to build and the real estate will then gradually be paid for in line with the progress of construction work.
The new property is at the Mayfarthstraße in Ostend, close to the European Central Bank. “The district has seen a rapid development since the arrival of the 2,500 ECB employees, and in the coming years it will experience further revitalization,” Robert Bambach, the board member at Commerz Real responsible for real estate transactions, said in a statement. More than 1,400 companies and institutions have already moved to the neighborhood.
Following its completion in the first half of 2020, the six-story hotel will have 179 rooms. The construction project will be supported by Gold.Stein real estate. A lease agreement of 20 years plus an extension option of two-times-five-years has been concluded with the Novum Hotel Group. The Hamburg-based family-managed Novum Hotel Group owns 85 hotels throughout Europe with more than 8,000 hotel rooms. The revenues of the expanding group of companies was more than €100 million in 2015 and is set to rise to approximately €120 million by the end of 2016.
“[The new hotel’s] position in the immediate vicinity of the ECB complements perfectly our Novum Style Hotel at the central station,” David Etmenan, managing partner of the Novum Hotel Group, said.