100 000 m2 at a repurchase price of 117 million euros. Or housing for 650 people at a monthly average lease of 4 euros 35 cents per square metre. Or a private failure turned into a public asset.
Halted and completely empty since 2023, the Elbtower’s existence has been reduced to a risk factor and an ever shrinking value assessment in the bidding of the ongoing insolvency case. And while negotiations with Dieter Becken and a consortium of investors are ongoing, the threat of demolishing the building has recently been infecting the discussion. The object has clearly shifted from asset to burden. The city is under pressure. They are trying to avoid any involvement in the private project, as they would otherwise have to feed the beast with tax money and therefore run the risk of political death. But, like it or not, the responsibility lies with the city.
With the Repurchase right, originally intended solely as a lever, Hamburg has the unique opportunity to turn private failure into a public asset. 100 000 m2 for 117 million euros is a good deal.
The bare structure, a carcass, floor slabs stacked on top of each other will be rezoned by extending the logic of the city into the building. The plots are then redistributed via heritable building rights. Ownership is divided. The city of Hamburg retains public ownership of the land while granting permissions to build and use. Housing cooperatives, housing foundations and private individuals move in.
As a monument to failure, the elbtower puts our set of values, the financial logic that underlies our daily lives, at stake. Perhaps the world we live in has not been ruined. It never started decaying or slowly disintegrating. It has risen into ruin all along. If we want to make sense of this world, we need to reconsider what presents itself to us as apparent burdens. Unfinishedness is not a threat, but precisely that which invites for perpetual continuation.
