Skyline Plaza

The Skyline Plaza is a shopping center with 170 stores located in Frankfurt’s European District. In addition to the shopping center, the building complex consists of an attached parking garage and the David Lloyd fitness center. The retail space is on a total of two shopping levels and comprises around 38,000 square meters (409,028 square feet) of retail space.

In the middle of Skyline Plaza is a popular food court that includes dozens of restaurants. On the roof of the building complex there is a roof garden, a free viewing platform and the Alex restaurant. The Skyline Plaza shopping center was officially opened on August 29, 2013.

The Skyline Plaza is located to the west of Frankfurt’s city center and its location characterizes a dominant entrance part of the European District. The boulevard Europa-Allee, which runs in an east-west direction, ends on its eastern side directly at the shopping center.

The oval building plot is a 47,000 square meter section to the east of the former Frankfurt Central Freight Station in the Gallus district. In the north the property borders on the exhibition grounds, in the south on Güterplatz, not far away from Mainzer Landstrasse street.

Tower ONE, the Kap Europa congress center of Messe Frankfurt, the Adina Apartment Hotel Frankfurt and the Grand Tower are right next to the Skyline Plaza shopping center. The complex’s earlier working titles were Westend Plaza and Urban Entertainment Center Frankfurt.

The Skyline Plaza can be reached by private transport and is connected by public transport. The underground line U4, the tram lines 16 and 17, the bus line 50 and the night bus line n83 as well as the tram lines 11 and 21 (Güterplatz station) all run a few hundred meters away. The extended bus route 46 into the European District (Mühlberg or Kaiserlei–Römerhof) stops at Güterplatz and Den Haager Strasse in the immediate vicinity of the Skyline Plaza. The U5 underground line is currently being extended into the European District and will later serve the Güterplatz station at Skyline Plaza (completion planned for 2024).

The area around the Skyline Plaza has developed into a high-rise cluster in recent years. In addition to the existing high-rise buildings MesseTurm, Kastor, Pollux, Tower 185, ONE and Grand Tower, the high-rise Eden Tower will be completed by 2022 and the The Spin 2023. In addition, the Millennium Towers, including Germany’s tallest skyscraper, are to be built in the vicinity of the Skyline Plaza.

On the roof of the Skyline Plaza shopping center there is a viewing platform that can be used free of charge and offers a good view of the surrounding skyscrapers, the Europa-Allee boulevard and the Taunus mountains in the distance. The Alex restaurant is also on the same level. So you can combine both at once: good views and dining!

There are dozens of gastronomic offers in the Skyline Plaza Foodcourt: whether it’s a small snack, Italian, oriental, fast food or extravagant – a diverse gastronomic offer offers many delicacies for every kind of taste and cuisine.

The Skyline Plaza has a public parking garage with sufficient parking spaces. There are also charging stations for electric vehicles.

Europa-Allee 6, 60327 Frankfurt, Germany

There are no fixed opening times for the entire shopping center. Every shop has adjusted opening times, which can deviate from the usual opening times, especially during the COVID-19 period. The core opening hours of most of the Skyline Plaza shops are 10 AM to 8 PM Monday through Saturday. The shops are closed on Sunday, but you can still walk through the center.

The Skyline Garden is an outdoor area on the roof of the Skyline Plaza on the 6th floor (5. OG). The Skyline Garden is accessible free of charge and has two differently designed terrace areas with two playgrounds. Especially when the weather is nice, the Skyline Garden is a nice place to enjoy the time and the view of the Frankfurt skyline. For families with children, the climbing frames and sandpit in particular ensure that the youngsters can play and romp within sight of the outdoor terrace. The ALEX restaurant is also located at the Skyline Garden as well.

The first plans for a leisure and shopping center date from the late 1990s, after Deutsche Bahn (the national railway operator of Germany) decided in 1996 to close the main freight station due to insufficient capacity and to market the site. These plans were developed under the working title Urban Entertainment Center (UEC). A musical theater from Stella AG should be at the center of the UEC as a cultural attraction.

The UEC was originally planned by a consortium that included the owner of the property, then EIM and now Vivico, as well as the Canadian real estate company TrizecHahn. The UEC, which was then valued at 750 million euros in investment, was to consist of a six to eleven storey high perimeter block development, which is surmounted by a total of two high-rise buildings, an office and a hotel tower. After Stella AG, which specializes in musicals, went bankrupt in 2002 and TrizecHahn withdrew from Germany, the original concept, which was also controversial in terms of urban planning, could no longer be implemented.

The ECE Group, which specializes in shopping centers, and Vivico redesigned the UEC. The UEC was planned to now house a planetarium, a multiplex cinema and other leisure facilities such as an ice rink or an event plaza. In order to be able to finance the new attractions, the investors wanted the retail space to be expanded by 30 percent. This was rejected by a majority by the Frankfurt city council and referred to compliance with the existing urban development contract from 2001.

In March 2008, investors Vivico and ECE, as well as Frankfurt’s mayor Petra Roth and building department head Edwin Schwarz (both CDU) presented the project, renamed “Skyline Plaza”, at the MIPIM real estate fair in Cannes. Instead of the previously planned multiplex cinema, there should now be a second congress center for the adjacent trade fair grounds as well as other facilities for wellness and leisure in addition to the dominant shopping center; a leisure attraction with supraregional attraction was no longer planned. For an investment volume of 330 million euros, the hotel tower, the shopping center and the congress center were to be built at the same time, the construction of the office tower was initially postponed.

In September 2008 the city council passed a supplementary contract to the urban development contract of 2001. With the approval, the present preliminary building request could be approved by the city council.

In October 2010 Vivico and ECE submitted a building application for the shopping center, which followed in December for the congress center. At the same time it was announced that the MeridianSpa company will operate the 9,000 square meter fitness and wellness area in the Skyline Plaza. In March 2011, the City of Frankfurt issued the first partial building permit for the project. On June 1, 2011, the groundbreaking ceremony for the structurally connected shopping center and congress center complex took place, and at the same time, planning department head Edwin Schwarz handed over the final building permit to the investors. In the fall of 2011, the insurance group Allianz took an 80% stake in Skyline Plaza. The mall opened in August 2013.

The plans of the Urban Entertainment Center were also taken into account in the high-rise plans of the City of Frankfurt, which were drawn up by Prof. Jochem Jourdan and his team.