An interdisciplinary team from MEC, the national market leader for the management of retail parks and smaller retail properties, restructured the location on behalf of M&G Real Estate after the real store moved out and carried out a comprehensive refurbishment to ensure its future viability.
The MEC team, which included both the center management on site and the experts from Technical Management, Leasing Management and Development, developed a holistic concept with the aim of further optimizing the offering at the location and also making the historic property more sustainable.
Structural measures create sustainability
As part of the project, the mall was modernized, the roof and façade were sustainably renovated and the open spaces were redesigned. A key objective was to improve the property’s ecological footprint. The complete refurbishment of the roof area, which covers over 20,000 sq m, now makes a significant contribution to protecting the building from extreme weather events and improves thermal insulation. In addition, the heat supply for 70% of the newly designed retail space has been converted to heat pump technology, which reduces the CO2 emissions of Dreieich Nordpark by 40%.
“With the comprehensive refurbishment, we have not only succeeded in securing Dreieich Nordpark as a central local supply location, but also in making it future-proof. The combination of innovative modernization, sustainable refurbishment and a well thought-out tenant mix shows how retail parks can successfully develop to meet current and future retail requirements,” explains Derya Monshi, the responsible asset manager at M&G Real Estate, the owner’s representative of Dreieich Nordpark.
Restructuring of retail space enables full occupancy
However, the heart of the refurbishment is the restructured retail space. With Woolworth, Das Futterhaus, ALDI Süd, Drogerie Müller and Kaufland, five new retailers with concepts from the discount food, pet food, drugstore and household goods sectors have already successfully settled in Dreieich Nordpark and ideally complement the tenant and sector mix. “This was made possible because the new anchor tenant Kaufland did not take over the entire space of the previous real hypermarket and the sporting goods retailer De-cathlon is using a smaller sales area as part of a space optimization,” says Christian Thiele, Head of Leasing Management at MEC. The modernized location is now fully let.
Retail parks have a high need for modernization
“Retail parks are going through a phase of change: large-scale hypermarkets, which dominated the non-food sector in the past, are reducing their sales areas or – as in the case of real – disappearing from the market altogether. Although this poses challenges for center operators and owners, it also creates new opportunities for other tenants to develop further in established retail locations. As part of the holistic refurbishment, we were able to prove this in Dreieich Nordpark in collaboration with M&G Real Estate,” says Christian Schröder, COO of MEC, summarizing the results of the project.
