“Mainz is sexy and debt-free”

Everybody loves an underdog, former Lord Mayor of Mainz Nino Haase observed when asked about the rapid ascent of the Rhineland-Palatinate’s capital city to achieve the status of “economic wunderkind”. In the Prognos Zukunftsatlas 2025 ranking, this major city on the Rhine made the top ten among 400 German cities and rural districts. It jumped from number 55 – where it was languishing just three years previously – to number seven. For a long time, it had much less clout than other players in the Rhine-Main economic region. Whereas traditionally Frankfurt was seen as the heart of the German financial world, Wiesbaden as the state’s uncluttered administrative headquarters, and Darmstadt as the cradle of Germany’s Silicon Valley, the city of Mainz was primarily associated with enthusiastic Carnival celebrations.

Research as economic driving force

But the tide has turned. In terms of economic productivity, based on GDP per employee, Mainz now enjoys 1st place in Prognos’ national comparison ranking. And with 40 percent “highly qualified employees”, the city has become a high flier in the general battle for talented professionals. But how did Mainz achieve this turnaround in such a short amount of time?

The answer lies partly in the pandemic, and in the first mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine that was developed by Biontech in Mainz and sent out from here around the world. It is an entrepreneurial success story that brought the city high business tax revenue and a balanced budget, and also attracted numerous other companies to the area.

“We have done a lot right,” summarizes Haase in a press release, referring to the research funding and above-average number of start-ups in Mainz. The success follows years of working to form closer connections between colleges and new ventures, and therefore achieve swift translation of innovations into commercial applications.

Mainz is growing

However, Mainz is appealing to more than just biotechnology firms. The real estate sector has also recognized the city’s attraction – and not just because Mainz is growing, with several areas of military and industrial wasteland being developed into new neighbourhoods for living and working. “Mainz is sexy and also debt-free,” remarks Thomas G. Winkler, CEO of UBM Development.

Vienna-based property developer UBM has a total of seven projects in Zollhafen Mainz, including Timber Peak, which is the city’s first timber hybrid high-rise. “The prime waterside location is a USP for the Zollhafen. When we are convinced that something is right, then we like to be a big player,” says Winkler, who is not especially surprised at the improved rating for Mainz as an economic location. “Mainz has long been underrated, in my opinion. But it is ultimately part of a developer’s business model to recognize something about a location that others may not yet see.”

Germany’s best locations are called LILA

The real estate market research institute Empirica has named Mainz as a LILA location: LILA stands for quality of life, infrastructure, landscape and workplaces. Using these assessment criteria, Empirica’s scoring system provides a more precise definition of the general term “location”.

Whereas the established custom of splitting locations into A, B and C usually describes the corresponding macro- and microlocations of real estate and also its price, LILA criteria focus on the quality of life. Future viability is increasingly integrated as well, such as options for reuse and subjective factors regarding atmosphere, diversity and openness.

And Mainz is famous for precisely those latter factors, as a cosmopolitan university city with a strong community and residents who like to socialize and open their hearts to newcomers. As Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper puts it: “Mainz doesn’t just have an excellent economy, it is also a good place to live.”

Text: Gertraud Gerst
Translation: Rosemary Bridger-Lippe
Photos: Philipp Horak