Cornerstone of the Porta building on the MainTor site is laid

On 29th August 2012, the cornerstone of the first new building on the former Degussa site between Untermainkai and Neue Mainzer Straße in Frankfurt took place in the presence of Frank­furt’s mayor and head of planning Olaf Cunitz, DIC chairman Ulrich Höller, the architect Jürgen Engel and the chairman of Union Investment.

“Porta” is the name of the new 70 m high tower which is being built on Weißfrauenstraße next to the former Carmelite monastery; most of it will be rented to Union Investment after its completion. 20.500 m² of rentable space will be built on 19 floors according to the design of the architecture firm KSP Jürgen Engel, which is also responsible for the master plan for the entire area. There will be 140 parking spaces on the basement levels.

The building is planned to be completed in 2013 and is expected to achieve Gold certification by DGNB, the German Sustainable Building Council.

By 2016, as well as MainTor Porta, two further towers Winx and Panorama and two residential buildings, Maintor Patio and Palazzi will be constructed on the site. The corner building in the direction of Willy-Brandt-Platz is currently being revitalized and will be named Main­Tor­ Pri­mus.

The planning and construction processes are characterized by the technical challenges involved in building on inner-city sites. For instance, the adjacent underground railway line makes it difficult to anchor the enormous construction pit; in some areas, the anchoring had to be moved inwards.

The owner of the complex is Deutsche Immobilien Chancen (DIC), which will be able to offer a mixture of office, residential, retail and restaurant space over an area of 108.000 m². In addition to Jürgen Engel, the firms of Prof. Christoph Mäkler and Jo Franzke were responsible for the architecture.

KREBS+KIEFER Ingenieure Darmstadt is responsible for checking the structural design of this project and for construction supervision. The checking engineer is Mr. Dieter Hanek.