FAQ

The five-square-kilometer site will be home to:

Berlin TXL – Urban Tech Republic

The airport buildings and adjacent areas are being transformed into Berlin TXL – Urban Tech Republic, a research and industrial park where technologies for the city of tomorrow are researched, developed, produced, tested, and exported. This is where science and research meet industry and commerce, and start-ups meet investors. And everyone works together to find solutions for the cities of tomorrow.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Six core themes of urban technologies were defined for the curated location:

• the efficient use of energy
• eco-friendly mobility
• clean water
• recycling
• sustainable construction and application of new materials
• the networked control of systems

The existing buildings have a gross floor area of around 200,000 m². The campus will cover 39 ha, the commercial strip 70 ha and the industrial park 82 ha. The total area of the Urban Tech Republic covers 202 ha.

Users of the Urban Tech Republic will include start-ups, students, academics and established companies. Two important anchor tenants have already been identified: the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (Berliner Hochschule für Technik) and the Berlin Fire and Rescue Academy (BFRA).

Up to 1,000 companies can locate here; up to 20,000 jobs are to be created.

Berlin TXL – Schumacher Quartier

The 46-hectare Schumacher Quartier is being built to the east of the airport site and a little beyond. This new residential district will offer over 5,000 apartments for more than 10,000 people – along with the associated facilities such as schools, daycare centers, sports facilities, shopping facilities and plenty of green space. The new district will be one of the world’s largest timber construction districts.

As a sustainable and socially mixed area, Schumacher Quartier will make an important contribution to the German capital’s housing and urban development strategy. In a charter, all partners involved have agreed on seven guidelines for the development of Schumacher Quartier:

• Urban living spaces
• Housing for everyone
• Urban green space and public areas
• Open educational landscape
• Climate-friendly and water-sensitive urban development
• District with environmentally-friendly mobility guaranteed
• Communication, participation, and transparency

Urban Heathland

Where airplanes used to take off, Grün Berlin will develop and operate a unique green leisure and recreation area for Berlin in the coming years. The Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection has entrusted Grün Berlin with the task of taking over the necessary development and safeguarding measures for the Tegeler Stadtheide landscape area. The 190-hectare area encloses the protected transition zone between the new urban quarters to the south and east of the former airport site and the existing protected landscape areas of Flughafensee and Jungfernheide to the north and west. The aim is to create an open space that brings together nature, life and work in a qualitative and sustainable way.

With the takeover of the site in August 2021, preparatory construction measures began, in particular the clearance of explosive ordnance. Following the removal of existing contaminated sites, the first civil engineering measures for technical development began in 2022/2023. Conversion and renovation work on the existing buildings in the Urban Tech Republic will also begin. The construction of the first residential buildings and the educational campus in Schumacher Quartier is expected to follow in 2028.

We are expecting an implementation period of around 20 to 30 years.

The education campus and the first residential buildings in Schumacher Quartier are expected to be completed from 2028/29; the last ones in the 2030s. Construction work in the Urban Tech Republic will probably continue for another ten years, but may take less or more time depending on the economic situation. The research and industrial location will never be truly “finished” – it will develop and change in an agile manner.

No, that won’t happen. Large parts of the existing buildings are listed buildings and will form the nucleus of the future Urban Tech Republic. The iconic ensemble of buildings will be preserved for Berlin. Only lower grade parts without protected status will be removed, for example containers, tanks above ground and such like, or buildings that do not form part of the historic architectural ensemble.

The Berlin University of Applied Sciences will move into the central Terminal A – probably in 2029. Terminal B is intended as a start-up and event center. A technology center with laboratories, offices and workshops is being built in Terminal D. There are numerous ideas for the tower, but a decision about its subsequent use has not yet been made.

Terminal C will be dismantled. This provisional annex, dating from 2007, is neither part of the historic ensemble nor a listed building.

• Bus 109 runs to the Urban Tech Republic terminus, where the meeting point for the site tours is located. Before that, it also stops at the General-Ganeval-Brücke for the exit to the Infocenter Berlin TXL. You can find the route to the Urban Tech Republic stop here.
• With the further development of the Urban Tech Republic and the Schumacher Quartier, new public transport connections are to be expected. In future, there will also be a streetcar connection.
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The former Tegel Airport is a major construction site, which also has an impact on the surrounding area and neighborhood. We would like to keep these as small as possible and at the same time ask for your understanding for the necessary measures.

The construction site access road is located at the former airport access road on Saatwinkler Damm (southern access road). There will be a second one on Kurt-Schumacher-Damm in the future.

We will search the area for explosive ordnance. If an “unexploded bomb” is discovered, there may be temporary road closures and, if necessary, evacuation measures in the surrounding area.

Meteorstraße will be converted into a city street with new footpaths and cycle paths, tree-planted grass verges and two lanes in both directions. Restrictions are also to be expected here during the construction work.

Of course, we will inform you in good time about upcoming measures.

As part of the Integrated Urban Development Concept (ISEK), various measures are being implemented to develop the area around Tegel Airport. Further information can be found on the website of the Senate Department for Urban Development, Building and Housing.

Parts of the “TXL North” development site will continue to be used by the helicopter squadron of the German Armed Forces Air Wing. Planning for this quarter is still in its infancy. We are currently working on the feasibility analysis.

Berlin TXL will be financed from various public and private sources: Berlin budget funds, EU and federal subsidies and the marketing and leasing of space. Overall, we expect total investment of around eight billion euros, the majority of which will be private investment.

egel Projekt GmbH is a public corporation and awards the contracts as part of public tender procedures that, depending on their size, are published on the stipulated platforms, for example on the State of Berlin’s tendering platform. Join in our public tenders – we look forward to working with you!

On the contrary: traffic will tend to decrease and the surrounding area will be relieved. For comparison: before the collapse in air traffic as a result of the coronavirus crisis, more than 70,000 people traveled to the airport every day – via the bottleneck of the airport feeder road. In the future, up to 20,000 people will work in the area and around 10,000 people will live there. An innovative mobility concept has also been developed for Berlin TXL.

Following the closure of Tegel Airport, almost 30,000 apartments can be built on the site itself and in the surrounding area, which will significantly ease the situation on the Berlin housing market. In Spandau and Reinickendorf, there are also plans for neighborhood conservation areas in order to minimize the pressure to upgrade housing after the closure of the airport. The instruments of the federal government (rent control) are also taking effect here. The so-called ISEK (Integrated Urban Development Concept) “Surroundings Berlin TXL” has also been drawn up for the area surrounding the airport site. The objective is to network the Urban Tech Republic and Schumacher Quartier as closely as possible with the existing city districts all around.

Not in the short term. The site was closed when air traffic ceased. However, our Infocenter Berlin TXL in Building V is available for you to obtain information, visit exhibitions or take part in events, and you can also book the premises for your event.

There are regular tours of the area so that lots of people can enjoy this special location. The two-hour outdoor walks can be booked at https://museumsdienst.berlin. In addition, individual areas of the existing buildings will be used for events.

Outside of these offers, the area is inaccessible and secured against unauthorized access. As soon as the respective construction phases are completed, the site will gradually become accessible to the public.

Grün Berlin GmbH is responsible for the extensive landscape park north and west of the Urban Tech Republic. Following the removal of explosive ordnance and the remediation of contaminated sites, it will gradually open the site to the general public over the next few years. Several new entrances will also be created for this purpose.

The former cargo hall (Frachthalle), building H from the 1970s offers flexibly usable hall, workshop and office space with direct access to the street side and the former airfield. As an important part of the Urban Tech Republic, a growing community of currently over 30 start-ups, companies and institutions working on solutions for a sustainable future has been developing in the Frachthalle since 2022.

The freight hall can be reached by bus number 109 (bus stop: Urban Tech Republic) or by car.

Quite a lot. Apart from the huge landscaped area, which will be freely accessible, there will be a variety of attractive sports and exercise facilities: Playgrounds, multi-sports facilities and fitness and health points along running routes. A roller derby track, a street skate facility, a streetball facility, a bicycle course, a parcours and calisthenics facility and much more will be offered on the surface of the runway and taxiway. A bouldering facility, a grass ball sports area, an area for frisbee golf and an outdoor fitness area are planned for the park’s green spaces.

All sports and play areas in the neighborhood and landscape park will be designed with gender requirements in mind and as barrier-free as possible to support joint play. Shade roofs and seating, picnic tables and informal stands will be arranged in the sports and play areas to create a variety of meeting points.