Putin’s war leaves a ‘real estate hole’ in the ‘Alexander Tower’ skyscraper in Berlin

In Berlin, it’s economic consequences of that war of Russian aggression, which explain why in the works of the Alexander Tower – or “the Alexander Tower” -, in the heart of the German capital, almost everything remains to be done. Where that tower should be being built, what there is is a concrete esplanade. It is a plot that seems prepared to start a work that has not yet started.

The real estate project is located on the Alexander Platz square, known, among other things, for be there the TV Tower like other classic tourist spots in the German capital. It is assumed that the Alexander Tower was going to rise there about 150 meters and that in its 42,000 square meters it would have space for offices, shops and up to 377 homes. In theory, the project is a 35-story skyscraper designed by the firm of the Ortner & Ortner Baukunst architecture firm, which has offices in Berlin, Cologne (West Germany) and Vienna.

However, the works have been stopped for months. Nobody cares about the generous puddles that occupy the area where the tower should have started to be built. The wood accumulated on one of the sides of the work seems to accumulate mold. On a fence, there is a sign warning that a loose dog watches over the work, but when SPANISH visits the works there are no signs of life in them. A large red crane seems to be useful at this point, more than to move heavy material, so that the clueless seagulls that wander freely through what was once the most colorful area in the center of the extinct Republic can nest and rest on it. Democratic Republic of Germany (GDR), communist Germany.

In one of the passageways for pedestrians and bicycles that had to be installed because the work has devoured the sidewalk and a bike lane, there are signs of the company behind the Alexander Tower. They have been there for so long that they have been the victim of the worst street art that Berlin is so dirty. “Soon, Alexander Tower,” announces one of those billboards to no avail. They present the address of a web page, “www.alexander-tower.com“, which leads to an Internet dead end.

Are those symptoms, not how badly the city has been managing its works for a long time public if one listens to the recurring complaint of Berliners according to which, in Berlin, there are construction zones where no one really works. Nor is the stoppage of the Alexander Tower the result of the disastrous housing policy developed by the successive Social Democratic mayors that the city has accumulated since 2001.

In this policy, solutions such as rent ceilings or the remunicipalization of housing have been implemented, without ceasing to aggravate the situation in the capital, not to mention the now-forgotten referendum according to which the city-state that is Berlin had to expropriate the large homeowners, namely companies with more than 3,000 houses. The last left-wing coalitions that have governed the city, with leftists from Die Linke, The Greens and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), have failed in managing the “housing emergency” that Berliners have been suffering for years.

Construction delays

However, the problems of the Alexander Tower have nothing to do with local politics. The evils that have been preventing the progress of these works for months are, rather, geopolitical. This has been stated at least by the Monarch Group, the Russian firm responsible for the project, through its lawyer, Detlev Stoeker.

Last April, before the city’s new mayor took office, the conservative Kai Wegnerwho is going to govern in a ‘grand coalition’ with the SPD, the Berlin Executive announced that He wanted to fine the Monarch Group five million euros for the delays in the works, as reported by the public radio-television of the Länder Berlin and Brandenburg (RBB). “The delays in the construction process that they caused the ticket are not our faultbut are due to the geopolitical situation,” according to Stoeker.

This is how Stoeker alluded to the consequences of Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine. It happens that the money of the Russian company, being in banks in the country of Vladimir Putin, cannot be transferred to a German entity due to the international sanctions triggered by the war of aggression against Ukraine. That is the explanation that Stoeker has given to explain the real estate hole that, for the moment, the Monarch Group has left in the center of Berlin. This company is chaired by an Armenian businessman, Sergei Ambartsumyan, of whom his money is said to be in Russia.

Monarch Group is supposed to be obliged by contract with the authorities to stick to a schedule that long ago stopped respecting the Russian firm. The patience of those responsible for the city has already run out. “Berlin he does not want to have a ruinous investment there“, said before leaving office the person in charge of the Treasury until Wegner’s arrival at the City Council, the environmentalist Daniel Wesener.

Another “architectural sin”?

The paralyzed work hinders an access area To a shopping center next to Alexander Platz, the Alexa. The work of the Alexander Tower does not improve an architectural setting that is difficult to appreciate in this part of central Berlin. It is not because of its particular beauty that this shopping center is affectionately called “pink bunker“, alluding to its color, or “pharaonic tomb”, due to the shapes of its façade. The German urban planner and historian Trurit Fröbe has called the Alexa an “architectural sin”.

Probably another “architectural sin” leave unfinished a mammoth work like the Alexander Tower on such a site, next to the Alexa, and next to well-preserved GDR buildings like the Teachers’ House or the Congress Palace that have found uses in today’s democratic and capitalist Germany. Hence It has even been proposed that the city repurchase the land which occupies the until now failed project of the Monarch Group.

The problems of this work began last year, as a consequence of the war. The building is supposed to be finished in September of this year. That goal was already unattainable in 2022. So those who had hope in the project thought of 2024 as the year in which the work would be finished. Now, apparently it takes something more than hope to restart the project.