Retail therapy remains a great pleasure for many people in Germany. Numerous visitors to shopping centres stroll through shops for hours on end, enjoying a refreshment or meal in between their spending sprees. A major problem for many operators, however, is that visitors mostly browse the ground and lower levels of their shopping centres, leaving the upper floors less frequented.

With retail space from the second floor onwards becoming less valuable, and shop tenants correspondingly paying less rent, the upper floors of shopping centres are being increasingly used for other uses. A study by the EHI Retail Institute has shown that almost every second (46 percent) shopping centre is now also an office location. Doctors’ practices and similar healthcare sector providers, as well as leisure facilities such as cinemas, are also very common. The old single-purpose shopping centre has therefore become a mixed-use property.

While such mixed-use concepts can be incorporated f