Berlin-based investor Trockland Management is on the brink of buying the land at the city’s former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing for €85 mln, according to Bloomberg.
Berlin-based investor Trockland Management is on the brink of buying the land at the city’s former Checkpoint Charlie border crossing for €85 mln, according to Bloomberg.
The 9000 m2 site has been in the hands of Ireland-based Cannon Kirk Group since 2007, when two developer brothers bought the debt on the site for €29 mln when the previous owner went into liquidation. The asset was later offered as security to Allied Irish Banks and ended up in the possession of Ireland’s bad bank NAMA.
Cannon Kirk’s involvement with Checkpoint Charlie, which it never owned outright, was controversial because many Berliners felt the management of the site was disrespectful of its history as the most prominent gateway between East and West Berlin during the Cold War.
Plans to build residential and commercial property on the site, either side of Friedrichstraße, failed to materialise and a number of kiosks and a sausage museum appeared instead. Two years ago a threatened foreclosure was staved off at the last minute when the group paid an outstanding property tax bill.
At the time NAMA put the site up for sale in September 2014, Michael Cannon told the Irish Times: ‘When we moved to Germany things were quiet and we take a view that Germany is now going where we hoped it would.’
