Adlershof as a brand: Interview with Navigo Capital CEO Probstel
The real estate company Navigo Capital runs fi ve buildings with offices and workshops in Adlershof. Managing Director Michael Probstel talks about troubled times and the art of transforming a location into a brand.
ADLERSHOF SPECIAL: Mr. Probstel, early this year the exhibition stand fitter and furnisher ideea had to close its doors for good, and you lost a major tenant. What are your plans now?
PROBSTEL: For Adlershof it was too bad to lose the ideea brand after nearly fifteen years. I remember when we tried in 2007 together with the State of Berlin to stabilise the company by taking over its premises. On the other hand, the insolvency has provided the opportunity of establishing new event and exhibition stand fitters and furnishers, and so consolidating the ‘Adlershof brand’ on this sector.
How did you find new tenants so quickly for this space?
We utilise both our tenants’ networks and of course our own, for instance at EXPO REAL in Munich or the real estate forum GRI in Frankfurt. Because Adlershof is enjoying such a dynamic development, we are also working towards opening up the whole area around the Medien-Technologie-Centrum MTC for companies that do not operate on the media sectors. At the moment, though, this has not yet been approved by the building authorities.
What makes the Adlershof brand so appealing?
It is founded on excellent transport links and cluster promotion targeting the infrastructure. In addition, the Adlershof Projekt management communicates the location very well both at home and abroad and works together with WISTA-MANAGEMENT GMBH towards networking the companies with each other. Also, it is the brands in Adlershof that make the location itself a brand.
Like the high-tech companies SOLON and Sulfurcell that made Adlershof famous as a solar location?
For example. A new solar company now finds it easy to recruit good people. These people know that they could also find a place at another company on the sector should disaster strike here. But Adlershof not only represents the solar sector. For many new companies, Adlershof is the very first chapter of their success story. The most famous of these in our buildings are undoubtedly the online marketplace for rented articles Erento.de and the netlabel Dooload.de.
How do your Medien-Technologie-Centrum MTC and the Business Center Adlershof (BCA), opened two years previously, differ from the other technology centres established here?
They are the ideal complement. For our renovated building stock we can offer very favourable starter rents of about five euro per square metre. Our space allows growth, and there are no restrictions on the period of tenancy – unlike many promoted technology centres in Adlershof. We manage our buildings here on site and can therefore respond to our tenants’ needs quickly and flexibly. And: We also provide office space as small as twenty square metres, for instance for freelancers.
by Wolfgang Richter