ECE’s new Aquis Plaza in Aachen offers state-of-the-art shopping

Aquis Plaza opened its doors in Aachen on Wednesday morning with a number of new innovative services from the technological centre of shopping centre developer ECE.

Innovations that ECE has introduced at the new 29,000 m2 mall include a digital 3D guiding system and Google Maps to help visitors navigate through the centre. Aquis Plaza also offers a tactile plan to guide visually impaired visitors through the mall, the Easy-to-Park card for ticketless and cashless parking and the Car Finder, a parking guidance system which clearly shows available parking spaces.

Other novelties include a Selfie Photo Box, a customer lounge, a kids´ playground in the food court and multisensory installations. The multisensory installations are being implemented for the first time at Aquis Plaza and consist of sounds, scents and lights to create a feel-good atmosphere for new visitors, Joanna Fishers, ECE’s Managing Director Center Management, told a press conference ahead of the opening of the new mall.

‘We have created four different soundscapes based on four different themes to welcome visitors to different sections of the mall including the entrance, car park, food court and toilets.’

Future Labs
The innovations originate from ECE’s Future Labs, Fisher explained. These centres of technology, which ECE set up two years ago to experiment with new services, are based at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg, Essen and Marmara Park in Istanbul.

Aquis Plaza derives its name from Aquis Granum, the name the Roman occupiers gave to Aachen almost 2,500 years ago. The design is inspired by Aachen’s thermal batching tradition.

The new mall offers same-day delivery services, or Shopping without Schlepping, as well as free wifi and centre apps with customer-loyalty marketing initiatives. ‘Aquis Plaza is setting new standards in urban development and modern architecture,’ ECE’s CEO Alexander Otto said at the opening ceremony on Tuesday evening. ‘Visitors to the centre can look forward to a unique shopping experience with diverse and innovative services.’

ECE and Strabag acquired the former Kaizersplatz-Galerie in 2012 from Adalbertstrasse Development Company. The project, which had been financed by state-owned Dutch financier SNS, had been put on ice for some time following the collapse of the development company headed by Dutch entrepreneurs Pim Kaufman and Johan van den Bruele.

Cross-border catchment
Aquis Plaza is located in the centre of Aachen, close to the pedestrian zone of Adalberstrasse. Developed at a cost of €290 mln, the mall offers 130 specialty stores as a well as 500-seat food court. About 70% of the retailers are new to Aachen and include brands such as SuperDry, Levi’s and G-Star Raw. Regional brands such as bakery Bäckerei Nobis Printen and travel agent Tourt Gut Reisebüro account for roughly 20% of the tenant mix. With one exception, the mall was fully leased at opening.

ECE's Fisher said the malls catchment area comprised some 1.2 million inhabitants in the German state of North-Rhine Westfalia as well as nearby Belgium and the Netherlands. Aachen is located close to the Dutch-Belgian border and about 20 km from Heerlen.

The shopping centre was built by Strabag Real Estate and is owned by the Otto family with a small percentage in the hands of BAT, Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management and DZ Bank. Shopping centre management is in the hands of ECE.

ECE has been developing, building, leasing and managing shopping centres since 1965. The company is active in 16 countries and has 196 shopping centres under management. A number of new centres are currently under construction including Loom in Bielefeld and Zielone Arkady in Bydgoszcz in Poland.

According to Aachen’s Lord Mayor Marcel Philipp, the new mall ‘considerably enhances’ the city centre and the area around Kaizerplatz. ‘Aachen will gain even more significance as a shopping centre destination, especially for the surrounding region.’