They almost hit rock bottom.

In 2015, says Frank Achenbach, the mood in business and politics was in

Offenbach so bad "that the incorporation into Frankfurt was seriously considered".

Anyone who knows about the relationship between the two neighboring cities can well imagine the seriousness of the situation.

The fact that it didn't have to come to that is due to a plan that Achenbach pulls out of his bike bag.

The tall man who is also the managing director of the “Offenbach

offensiv ”and one of the managing directors of the Offenbach Chamber of Commerce and Industry, stands in the harbor district and wants to explain a few things first before he leads a bike tour.

It should go to the places where the urban redevelopment becomes visible

Offenbach undertook the same master plan five years ago and so much of which has already been implemented that the city is gaining new self-confidence.

Inga Janović

Business editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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As if to confirm, Achenbach points across the river to its big neighbor, the city of Frankfurt.

“In the Römer they also have a lot of plans and concepts, but they are of little relevance in practical politics.

We have a master plan and it is alive. "

The western tip of Offenbach is a good meeting point to prove this: a 120-meter-high office tower will soon grow out of a construction pit between Nordring and Kaiserleistraße as the top of a new quarter called Nordkap, which the Danish heating and cooling technology company Danfoss has developed with its Germany headquarters already rented there.

The cranes rule

On the opposite side of the wasteland, right next to the Hafen 2 cultural center, there is a building sign for a hotel, a little further on, a large piece of land, only separated from the Main by the bike path, is reserved for the new building of the Hochschule für Gestaltung (HfG) in the former oil port High earners set up in houses by the water.

Achenbach finally drives away from the river, not far, to the former Kaiserlei mega roundabout, which is now an intersection. The cranes rule here. The master plan speaks here of the service district with green spaces and public use. The former Kraftwerk Union office block still juts out into the air as a skeleton, but it is being rebuilt amid a loud roar. Next door, the new building for the insurance company Axa has already been completed, and the car manufacturer Hyundai has already moved into its enlarged headquarters there.

Five years ago, most of it was only available on paper, but the idea behind the “Masterplan 2030” is now evident: The Offenbach-based company wants to attract the most modern and renowned companies possible to their city, because their jobs also come with those that they want City longs: people with a good education and solid income, who pay taxes, invest, consume.

Offenbach

,

 as Achenbach puts it, does not want to displace its colorful, but rarely well-paid population.

Nevertheless, the city could not only be the integration machine of the region, but should be “a place to arrive and to stay”.

On the Hafenplatz, where Achenbach stops again on this warm day and looks out over the river and the balconies of the new buildings, you wouldn't know why you shouldn't stay here.

But the location of the rest of Offenbach is known nationwide.

In this city, a migration background is the norm, unemployment is always above the national average, and the rate of academics is below that.