Berlin Next to the makeshift party tent, the construction machines are making a noise this morning, the scene is pervaded by a hum of the diesel generators. That doesn’t change either when Berlin’s designated First Mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD) raises her voice at the festive start of construction and praises the capital’s soon-to-be tallest skyscraper as an “opportunity for Berlin”. “We don’t want any delays in the work,” says Estrel managing director Ute Jacobs, defending the annoying noises – and only half jokingly means that.
Her boss, the now 81-year-old Berlin hotelier Ekkehard Streletzki, had to wait a long time for this moment. For almost two decades he experienced ups and downs in planning. “There were always painful setbacks,” he complains.
The building opposite its 1125 room congress hotel Estrel was originally intended to be a shopping center. At that time, he invested 1.7 million euros in planning and development, and tenants like Kaufland had long since won over to the 25,000 square meter project. But then in 2006 the city stopped the entire project just one day before the expected building permit.
But the native of the Westerwald did not give up. Eight years later, he presented the design by the Berlin architecture firm Barkow Leibinger to the Senate. It was to be the tallest building in Berlin, 176 meters high – and more than just a hotel.
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The hotelier announced shortly afterwards that he personally made the necessary sketch on a napkin. “For a civil engineer and structural engineer, skyscrapers are fascinating,” he said on Wednesday.
The “Park Inn” on Alexanderplatz, which opened in 1970 and has been the tallest building in the city to date, will tower over the Estrel Tower by 51 meters. With other specifications Streletzki rowed back. Instead of the original 800 rooms, there will now only be 525, and the opening will not be before 2024 either. Six years ago, construction was still hoped for in 2020.
Estimated construction costs increased to 260 million euros
The Berliners estimated the construction costs at 190 million euros at the beginning. Now the project is expected to cost 260 million euros. Civil engineering work began in the Neukölln district as early as July. 52 bored piles had to be anchored 30 meters deep in the ground, a 3.60 meter thick concrete slab had to ensure stability on the ground.
A mix of hotel rooms, apartments, offices and event spaces will be created on it over the next three years. The centerpiece will be a light-flooded, green and public atrium in which, in addition to a bakery and a shop gallery, an incubator for start-ups will also open.
Streletzki has planned meeting rooms and private dining rooms for the 41st and 42nd floors, while the 43rd and 44th floors will have a restaurant and a skybar with an outdoor terrace.
The tower is connected to the Estrel Congress Center (ECC) across the street by a tunnel. “The Estrel is thus expanding its leading position as Germany’s largest hotel and Berlin’s most successful congress location,” the company is already promoting.
The hotelier wants to build the tallest building in Berlin.
(Photo: imago images / Photopress Müller)
Estrel is the top-selling hotel in Germany
The hotelier from his knowledge of the Sieg is a career changer. As a civil engineer, he started a structural engineering office at the age of 27, which made him wealthy in Munich. In 1976 Streletzki founded the Berliner Diabos for diamond, concrete drilling and cutting work, a special company for demolition work with nine branches.
In the 1980s, on a flight back from the USA, the idea of opening a hotel in Berlin occurred to him. Legend has it that Ekkehard Streletzki scribbled the draft on a piece of paper right before landing.
Shortly afterwards, he acquired the premises of a disused cable manufacturer in Neukölln. The 17-story building, which has been glistening on Sonnenallee since 1994, bears – in short – his combined first and last name: “Estrel”.
The success proved his plans right. In 2000 the huge hotel was already Germany’s top-selling hotel. In 2019, the annual revenue, to which the Ellington Hotel am KaDeWe, which had been closed since August 2021, contributed, was 94.4 million euros – with a consolidated profit of 4.2 million euros.
The senior placed the residential and commercial real estate sector, which operates independently from the hotel company under the name Streletzki Group, currently comprises 650 apartments and has a project volume of 650 million euros, in the hands of his son Julian. The offspring from his first marriage was previously in charge of the management of the father’s demolition company, Diabos. Father and son are still business partners today: the senior runs the Saramartel company together with the 51-year-old Filius. She in turn owns half of the Babelsberg Film Park.
The big show is part of the business model
The 29-year-old Kira Streletzki and her 31-year-old brother Maxim, children from their second marriage to his wife Sigrid, on the other hand, only own small shares in the family business. While the daughter is mainly interested in the art scene, Maxim has been taking care of her father’s hotel business for three years. The interior design of the planned Estrel Tower is based on his ideas, as is the collaboration with a Brandenburg farm that is to provide part of the catering in the future.
Both children from their second marriage also regularly shine as celebrity guests at Berlin’s film and fashion events. Because that is also part of the business of the major Berlin hotelier. In 1999 he brought the ZDF show “Wetten, dass …?” To his congress hotel for the first time, followed shortly after by the heavyweight boxing world championship with Vitali Klitschko. The Bambi Awards, musicals such as “Thank you for the Music – The ABBA Story” or the double show “Stars in Concert” are also part of the program.
But a gigantic hotel project in the middle of the corona crisis? In fact, after a number of lockdowns, congress cancellations and accommodation bans, the industry is piling up substantial losses. The German hospitality industry closed the first half of 2021 with a decline in sales of 61.4 percent compared to the same period in the previous year, according to the Dehoga hotel association. Even in August, the number of overnight stays by foreign guests was 52.7 percent below the pre-crisis level.
From the point of view of the hotel expert Moritz Dietl, managing director of the Munich consulting firm Treugast, the investment in Neukölln is anything but risky. “In the next year, and probably also the year after that, such a hotel opening would be associated with earnings problems,” he believes. “But in 2024, when the skyscraper is completed, the market will realistically have recovered.”
Dietl believes that the project will hardly affect the rest of the capital’s hotel market. “The supply of such a large congress hotel, which has not yet existed in Germany, creates demand,” he is sure of. The Estrel is not in competition with other overnight hostels in the city, but will in future compete with event metropolises such as Rome or Barcelona.
More: Thanks to the influx of tourists: the Dorint hotel chain is back from pre-crisis levels