New building: Corporate headquarters in Essen

The ifm group of com­pa­nies will real­ize its new cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in the new­ly devel­op­ing office quar­ter ESSEN EINS. In 2026 the move to the new ifm com­pa­ny head­quar­ters will take place, which will be built about 500 meters away from the cur­rent loca­tion. The exec­u­tive board of the ifm Group announced this impor­tant mile­stone in the com­pa­ny’s his­to­ry today in the pres­ence of Thomas Kufen, Lord May­or of the City of Essen, and the man­ag­ing part­ner of Köl­bl Kruse GmbH, Dr. Mar­cus Kruse.

The com­pa­ny’s head­quar­ters have been locat­ed on Friedrich­straße in Essen since 2009. “Our Glück­aufhaus is burst­ing at the seams, we sim­ply don’t have enough space for the entire work­force here in Essen,” says Michael Marhofer, CEO of the group of com­pa­nies. The rea­son is the con­tin­u­ing suc­cess of the com­pa­ny, which was found­ed 52 years ago in Essen, and which is to be con­tin­ued in the future on the basis of a glob­al mar­ket. And this suc­cess is nat­u­ral­ly asso­ci­at­ed with a cor­re­spond­ing increase in the num­ber of employ­ees. The first func­tion­al areas have already had to move from the Glück­aufhaus to decen­tral­ized loca­tions. At present, just under 600 employ­ees work at the com­pa­ny head­quar­ters in Essen.

“In order to meet the increas­ing demand for space, the mod­ern cor­po­rate head­quar­ters will be built over the next few years on part of the 30,000 sq.m. site of the for­mer RWE head­quar­ters at the cor­ner of Huysse­nallee and Baedek­er­straße, which, unlike the Glück­aufhaus, offers us a long-term perspective.”

- Christoph von Rosen­berg, Chief Finan­cial Officer

“Essen One is the per­fect loca­tion for the new head­quar­ters,” explains Dr. Mar­cus Kruse. Con­tem­po­rary work­ing envi­ron­ments and mod­ern archi­tec­ture will char­ac­ter­ize the new loca­tion. The new cor­po­rate head­quar­ters is con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed near the main train sta­tion and is easy to reach by pub­lic trans­port. Over­all, the com­pa­ny will ben­e­fit from the over­all infra­struc­ture of Cam­pus Essen.

The sched­ule for the new ifm com­pa­ny head­quar­ters was also pre­sent­ed today: The plan­ning for the new build­ing project, which is start­ing now, should lead to a start of con­struc­tion in 2024. Com­ple­tion and move-in are sched­uled for 2026 at the lat­est. “We are already look­ing for­ward to our new mod­ern cor­po­rate head­quar­ters in the heart of the city of Essen,” empha­sizes Michael Marhofer, “where we can con­tin­ue our pos­i­tive busi­ness trend in the long term.”

Back in 2016, Köl­bl Kruse secured the approx­i­mate­ly three-hectare site between the city cen­ter and the main train sta­tion, Phil­har­monie, Bis­mar­ck­straße and Huysse­nallee — with a direct con­nec­tion to the A40 motor­way — for a new devel­op­ment. Fol­low­ing the depar­ture of RWE AG in sum­mer 2020, demo­li­tion of the exist­ing build­ings on the site began in Sep­tem­ber 2020. The demo­li­tion work will be com­plet­ed by sum­mer 2022 at the lat­est. The site will cre­ate an office quar­ter in the most exclu­sive loca­tion — from which the quar­ter’s brand name “Essen Eins” is derived — with flex­i­ble office space that is urgent­ly need­ed on the Essen office market.