Car park in Vienna, Austria

The Hauptbahnhof East 1&2 car parks, together with more than 800 spaces, are located in Vienna’s new urban district ‘Sonnwendviertel’ and are let on a long-term lease to car park operator Goldbeck Parking. The supermarket is occupied by Aldi-owned Hofer, while the commercial unit is rented by rock climbing gym Boulderbar with additional income derived from leases on communication antennas and roof-top solar panels. The vendor is the building-owner Rhomberg Bau GmbH, who built the property as general contractor together with Goldbeck Rhomberg.

The car parks are located in Vienna, which is the largest city of the country with 1.9 million inhabitants. Austria has a well-developed social market economy and is one of the fifteenth richest countries in the world in term of GDP per capita. It is a highly developed industrialized country with an important service sector. The most important industries are food and luxury commodities, mechanical engineering and steel construction, chemicals, and vehicle manufacturing.

The Sonnwendviertel is one of Vienna’s largest regeneration schemes. It is located in the Favoriten area which is amongst the most densely populated parts of the city with over 200,000 inhabitants. Constructed on the site of the former south railway station, the new district includes 5,500 new apartments for 13,000 residents, offices and hotels, together with social and cultural schemes. As the main car parks designated for the neighbourhood, Hauptbahnhof 1&2 will predominantly cater for local needs. In future, they could also serve the new central railway station, Wien Hauptbannhof, which opened in 2014 and is a 10-minute walk away, as well as the districts on the other side of the railway line, which can now be accessed via a new pedestrian bridge.

Both car parks are newly built and are up to date with respect to electrical charging points, elevators, routing and the width of parking spaces. The main façade of car park 2 consists of surrounding plates. Both facades are open to the outside air which make natural ventilation possible (therefore limiting the number of technical installations).

Bas Magielse Fund Manager of Primevest Capital Partners, said: “The traditional role of car parks as warehouses for vehicles is changing. They are emerging as ‘mobility hubs’, offering a wider range of uses and becoming increasingly integrated into the urban infrastructure landscape, as the availability of expensive on-street parking shrinks and metropolitan authorities move to restrict vehicle access to city centres. Consumers benefit from the additional services these mobility hubs can offer, from electric car charging points to e-commerce ‘pick-up’ services. With its supermarket and additional services this acquisition is set to become a mobility hub for Sonnwendviertel. Vienna has proven to be one of the most resilient cities in Europe and this asset exactly meets our investors’ criteria. This acquisition further strengthens our pan-European portfolio of high quality and sustainable assets, which are in high demand from investors. We remain in acquisition mode and have capital readily available to be deployed for car park investments across Europe.”