Basel: SBB plans urban quarter at Wolf freight station
On the northern part of the Wolf freight yard in Basel, a new urban quarter is to be built with living space for 1,200 people and jobs for around 1,000 employees.
The roughly 16-hectare site of the Wolf freight station belongs to the SBB and is currently still used for freight handling. As logistics will partly relocate to Basel-Nord, space will be freed up for the development of a mixed-use urban quarter. The planning envisages a closed courtyard perimeter development consisting of structurally coherent individual buildings. The development is divided into a "residential courtyard", a "commercial courtyard" and a "historic centre".
Around 550 apartments are to be built in the residential courtyard, at least one third of which will be affordable. The commercial courtyard is located in the eastern part of the site and is adjacent to the existing transshipment building and the remaining logistics. Commercial and office uses are planned here. In the historic centre in the middle of the site, public uses will be realised in the existing halls and in the service building, e.g. gastronomy, culture, trend sports, but also co-working spaces or health services.
The guideline project for the site development was based on the designs of the architectural firms Christ & Gantenbein from Basel and EM2N Architekten from Zurich. According to the canton of Basel-Stadt, one objection and five comments were received during the public planning process. The objection was withdrawn, and the comments were taken into account where possible. Now the Grand Council will deal with the changes to the land use plan. In addition to the new development plan, these include a zone change, a change in the noise sensitivity level, a change in the residential share plan, and changes to building and street lines in the St. Jakobs-Strasse area. (ah)
