The new headquarters, a strategic location decision
Bayreuth
Location
390
Employees
2018-ongoing
Project period
25.000 m² BGF
Space
Stadtwerke Bayreuth Holding GmbH is planning to relocate its company headquarters to Eduard-Bayerlein-Strasse in Bayreuth, by 2025.
The company has been based at multiple locations around the city until now. The new headquarters will bring the existing locations together, in keeping with the new building’s stated aims of functionality and sustainability. combine provided support for the strategic process of choosing a location with broad-based analyses of the location, demand, and various scenarios. These steps led to a recommended course of action on real estate strategy for the utility company’s Supervisory Board. Stadtwerke homepage.
Since the decision was made, combine has been responsible for overall project management for the new building on Eduard-Bayerlein-Straße and for project planning for the properties not directly needed for operations (including an urban residential development called Am Sendelbach and sustainable neighborhood development on Birkenstraße). combine also provided support during the architecture competition, launched in 2021, for the new company headquarters. The winners were chosen in August 2022. Dortmund-based Gerber Architekten took top place, with a design from Munich-based firm H2M coming in second. The company will choose one of the two designs by the end of the year. The crucial factors at that point will include the amount of the total fee, the project organization, and provision of capacity by the firms. Another key aspect is how well a particular design can achieve the desired sustainability certification.
Eduard-Bayerlein-Straße
Optimization of the real estate portfolio with new company headquarters
The current situation: Alongside pools and parking facilities, Stadtwerke Bayreuth currently uses multiple properties around the city, including the property on Eduard-Bayerlein-Straße where the new headquarters are to be built. At the area on Birkenstraße where the company’s headquarters are currently located, the condition of the buildings and maintaining the buildings – some of which were built in the 1960s – were becoming increasingly problematic. “Of course, we kept investing in our properties, but we’ve reached the end of the road at this point in terms of the buildings themselves and their technical systems. The wheels are really going to come off soon,” says Managing Director Jürgen Bayer.
It was clear to us that our decisions would have far-reaching ramifications. After all, new company headquarters and the design used for them will stand for several decades.
Jürgen Bayer
Managing Director, Stadtwerke Bayreuth
With that in mind, the company decided to bring in external experts to supplement the internal project team and a discussion forum comprising representatives of all factions on the city council. “combine deals with issues like these day in, day out – their expertise and experience in corporate consulting have really helped us a lot. We worked with combine to view all of the properties and analyze how intensely we have been using them so far.” combine performed a site analysis and a detailed functional and economic assessment of the optimum main potential scenarios for the utility company.
The results made it clear that neither modernizing the existing situation nor a new “greenfield” construction project was an option – for reasons of both cost and use.
combine put together a business case with cost-effectiveness analyses, which ultimately supported the company’s decision to consolidate all of its locations at the property on Eduard-Bayerlein-Straße going forward. The strategic action recommendation served as a basis for the decision made by the company’s Supervisory Board and the city council, which approved the plan in principle.
As a result, the company was able to work with the city to ensure that the property met the requirements in terms of construction law and initiate the architecture competition in 2021.
In December 2022 Stadtwerke Bayreuth presented the winning design of Büro Gerber Architects. The move is planned in 2025.
Copyrights: Gerber Architekten, combine
Services
- Real estate strategy
- Location analysis
- Master planning
- Assistance with architecture competition
- Business case / profitability analyses
