Tegel Airport

Production and benchmark location for urban technologies

Built in 1948, Berlin’s inner city Tegel Airport (officially the Otto Lilienthal airport) is Germany fourth largest airport. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, planning began on the new major Berlin-Brandenburg International airport (BER). When the BER airport goes into full operation, Tegel Airport is to be closed. The required legal basis for planning and use as a research and industrial park was established in April 2011 through the government resolution on changing land use. The binding utilisation and development planning began in January 2012. On this basis, the Berlin Senate official ratified the TXL Master Plan on 30 April 2013.

Since work started on plans for reusing the Tegel Airport site, the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises has been intensively advising and supporting this process. As this is regarded as one of the key future locations for Berlin’s economic development, there is continuous and intensive economic policy involvement. In a discursive process with advisory support, the Senate Department has developed Tegel’s primary focus as “urban technologies”, and had this guiding principle confirmed by a Berlin Senate resolution. Once Tegel Airport is closed, new growth will be generated here, developing the site as a research and industry park for future technologies. In this way, the former airport is set to become a location both for urban technologies and for researching, developing and producing renewable energies and sustainable mobility.

With its favourable infrastructural integration and proximity to the scientific and research landscape in Berlin’s City-West, the Tegel site offers ideal conditions for this planned development. The Senate Department will support the preparatory planning stage to convert the terminal after the airport has been closed, and promote the requisite transport links to develop the future research and industry park. The economic policy objective is to create the conditions at this unique inner city location to optimally leverage the synergies from research, development, production and innovative solutions.

• Tegel Airport, A 111 motorway exit

• Energy
• Traffic / Mobility
• Material development

• Beuth University of Applied Sciences planned as an anchor in the development,
• TU Berlin in the vicinity,
• Fraunhofer Institutes in the vicinity

After the airport is closed, Tegel Projekt GmbH, a limited company fully owned by the federal state of Berlin, is to oversee the process of transforming the site into the Urban Tech Republic, a research and industry park. Tegel Projekt, founded in 2011, is a subsidiary of WISTA-MANAGEMENT GMBH. The task of developing the location includes securing, administering and marketing the buildings and spaces.

• berlintxl