>> Frankfurt Skyline Countdown # 9 <<     

Frankfurt’s new Grand Tower doesn’t strike me as being particularly grand, I must admit. It looks to me like some sort of oversized radiator. But after a few years I’m sure we’ll all get accustomed to it, and after a while it will seem quite homey, like a familiar peak in the city landscape. Its height is given as 180 meters (rounded up from 179.9), which makes it currently the ninth tallest building in Frankfurt.

Grand Tower (white) with Tower 185 (on the left) and Skyline Plaza

The Grand Tower is Frankfurt’s (and Germany’s) tallest purely residential skyscraper, consisting of 401 condominiums, most of which have already been sold. The apartments, according to the building’s website, were created “for today’s urbanites who want it all: A world of premium living, elegant design, and breathtaking views.” Needless to say, this does nothing to alleviate the housing shortage in Frankfurt, since the building contains no social or middle-class apartments.

What the Grand Tower has in common with the nearby Tower 185 is that both are somewhat taller than the allowed heights as listed in their building permits. Apparently the builders have realized that no one can stop them from adding a couple extra floors, certainly not the city’s building inspectors.

The Skyline Plaza, by the way, is Frankfurt’s newest and most hyped-up shopping mall. I’ve never been inside, so I can’t offer a first-hand report, but I understand that it has not been particularly successful up to now — which is no wonder, since the Rhine-Main region has more than enough shopping malls already. But perhaps the inhabitants of those 401 condominiums in the Grand Tower will take a liking to the Skyline Plaza and keep it going for a while longer.

Entrance to the Grand Tower, 2020

So far, the entrance to the Grand Tower bears little resemblance to the elegant and luxurious entrance hall as shown in the tower’s advertising material. When I took these pictures, the entrance hall was empty except for one folding table, some scaffolding and a sign saying no entry without a face-mask.

Grand Tower with nearby construction sites

The Grand Tower was declared finished in June 2020, but three months later it still makes an unfinished impression, both because they are still working on the entrance hall and because more construction is going on nearby. The building under construction on the left is either The Spin or Eden, which are both being built on the same site.

The one off to the right with the two cranes is called One. When it is completed, One will be Frankfurt’s sixth tallest building and will necessitate a re-numbering of some of these posts in the Frankfurt Skyline Countdown, but that won’t be before 2022.

Another construction site immediately adjacent to the Grand Tower is for a new subway station called Güterplatz for the underground line U5, which currently ends at the central railway station but is being extended for another 2.7 kilometers into and through the new Europa district.

My photos and text in this post are from 2020.

Next: Frankfurt Skyline Countdown # 8.