Nama to play role in clean-up of Checkpoint Charlie site

The historic border is a magnet for tawdry tourism. Loans on the site are linked to Nama

GERMANY USUALLY does an exemplary job at remembering its difficult past, but Checkpoint Charlie is the tawdry exception to the rule.

Almost everything at this choked Berlin junction – once the end of the western world – is either fake or tasteless or both.

For the duration of the cold war, Checkpoint Charlie was a gap in the Berlin Wall, the border crossing between East and West Berlin for diplomats and military personnel. Today the only original reminder from that time is the 50-year-old Berlin Wall Museum, still a huge tourist draw.

Around the museum are dozens of cheap souvenir shops and actors dressed up as border guards who pose with tourists for pictures – for a fee – before a replica sentry box. Other tourists have their passports stamped with East German visas, still others photograph the replica signs showing American and Russian soldiers and the infamous “You are leaving the American sector” sign – also a replica.

Above the McDonald’s, a recent arrival, a sign on a balcony promises “Sensational Views” – but the sight of the former checkpoint site one block to the north is anything but sensational.

Behind hoardings detailing the site’s history, a dozen cabins have just opened on the vacant lot for the summer season. The fortified former border crossing, where passports were checked and one man was shot dead in 1974, is now a tourist trap selling ice cream and kebabs. A stand selling “Allied Hot Dogs” opened two weeks ago.

At the nearby Berlin Wall Museum, owner Alexandra Hildebrandt looks out sadly at the site that, for 20 years, has been trapped in a bureaucratic limbo of disputed ownership and bankrupt owners. “I’m not annoyed at the Irish – if anything they’re being made the scapegoats,” she said. “But these investors, their bank and the Irish Government need to be aware of their responsibility for this site.”

Ms Hildebrandt has led the campaign for the site to be a memorial to German division. Seven years ago, she invoked the ire of Berlin’s mayor for renting the site and erecting crosses, one for every Berlin Wall victim. The current usage, she says, is a “disgrace”.

Contacted yesterday by The Irish Times, investor Michael Cannon denied “100 per cent” reports in Berlin newspapers that his company was “broke” or that it even owned the sites. Land registry records for the site run to almost 30 pages in the past 19 years and confirm the site’s contested history.

Mr Cannon moved in on the site with his brother Cathal and partner Owen Kirk in 2007, spending €29 million through their company KE Kavel Ltd to buy the outstanding charges on the land. “Our intention is to take out existing debt on the site, around €400,000 owed to the tax office, and have everything tidied up in the coming weeks,” said Mr Cannon. Once that is done, and the foreclosure auction halted, the Irish investors hope to take control of Checkpoint Charlie and start building work.

A recent surveyor’s report gives the site – 9,081sq m in two parts on either side of the Friedrichstrasse – a fiduciary value of€15.3 million and a market value of €23.9 million. A mixed-use development on the two sites could generate an annual rental income of €11.86 million, the surveyor estimates.

Since 2009, the site has been included in a €89.48 million security from KE Kavel Ltd on loans from Allied Irish Banks. These loans have been transferred to Nama. “AIB would have looked for additional security – nothing to do with the Berlin site, but on another investment – so we gave it to them,” said Mr Cannon.

He says he is determined to see through the investment, even with Nama on board. “Effectively they’re our bankers, but we are in one of the stronger positions with Nama and they’re being very constructive,” he said.

“We probably should have moved sooner on this site. We’re anxious to work together with the state of Berlin and to preserve the status of the site.”