Agency StadtWohnen Chemnitz
The StadtWohnen Chemnitz agency is a counselling service offered by the city of Chemnitz.
Its aim is to bring the numerous Gründerzeit buildings that have shaped the cityscape and have stood empty in Chemnitz city centre for many years back into discussion and redevelopment.
It is aimed at building owners as well as people and companies who are interested in creative and sustainable reutilisation of the buildings as users or investors.
Coordination centre
The agency sees itself as a coordination centre with which owners, potential users and investors can be networked and brought into contact. The agency actively approaches the owners of all those buildings where there is an urgent need for action and which, for one reason or another, have been withdrawn from the city's property market. Thanks to its close cooperation with Chemnitz City Council and its redevelopment agencies, it can respond to questions quickly and unbureaucratically.
Previous activity
The StadtWohnen Chemnitz agency originally emerged from a pilot project that was developed in 2006 as part of the ExWoSt research field "Cost-effective and quality-conscious development of existing residential properties" by the Arbeitskreis Integriertes Wohnen e.V. as the project organiser in cooperation with the City of Chemnitz.
Since the end of 2011, the agency has been run by the Westsächsische Gesellschaft für Stadterneuerung mbH (WGS), which acts as a redevelopment agency for the city of Chemnitz in the Sonnenberg district, among other areas. In the past, the agency has been specifically involved in the development of community-oriented forms of housing (multi-generation houses, family flats, etc.) in inner-city areas. Topics such as owner location communities, so-called user-owner co-operations and guardian houses were added. From March 2009 to March 2010, the agency also supported the Brühl-Nord/Hauboldstraße townhouse pilot project, which aims to create inner-city residential property and strengthen the city centre by redeveloping gaps and brownfield sites. Numerous interested parties were attracted to the project within a very short space of time.
The spectrum of work now includes a wide range of coordination activities in old buildings, for which the property portal was developed as a central platform.
Exemplary example
At the beginning of July, the European exchange programme URBACT, in which 550 cities from 29 countries and 7,000 local stakeholders are active, awarded the StadtWohnen Chemnitz agency as one of 97 exemplary practical examples of sustainable, integrated urban development.