"Events in industrial halls"

What Brown Boveri in Baden or the Sulzer brothers in Winterthur, for example, created back then served industrialization and today it serves the event business.

Here is an excerpt from history: In 1834, Johann Jacob Sulzer Neuffert acquired a plot of land measuring around 5000 m2 on Zürcherstrasse in Winterthur from the city of Winterthur and laid the foundations for his company there. Willi Frauenfelder from the Department of Cultural Affairs and Services knows how the path from that time led to today's event business. "Gradually, other factory halls and buildings were built on the same site, including Hall 710 - a brick building from the post-war period. The building served as a warehouse for casting molds until 1993. In 2007, the city of Winterthur acquired the hall from Sulzer Immobilien in order to put it to public/socio-cultural use."

"Rock'n'hole" in Winterthur

Although still somewhat less well known in the industry, Hall 710 has already hosted a number of attractive events; in 2017, it was used for exactly 132 days. Frauenfelder mentions general meetings and a gala evening of the Zurich Electrical Association, for example. It is also interesting to note that fans of urban golf meet in the hall and the Swiss championship has already been held there. Crossgolf means playing golf in an urban environment, for example in abandoned open-cast mines or industrial halls.

Zurich West

In Zurich, too, there are plenty of wonderful old industrial halls that have carved out good pieces of the Swiss MICE pie. Halle 622, StageOne and the Maag-Hallen have been successful providers of both corporate and public events for years. There were also pioneers at these locations, such as the family business Escher, Wyss & Cie, which was originally founded in 1805 as a cotton spinning mill and later became an industrial company specializing in machine and turbine construction. In 1889, an enormous plot of land was acquired at Untere Hard, today's Escher-Wyss site in the Zurich West urban development zone.

Shipbuilding

The Schiffbau, which is now an indispensable part of the Zurich Schauspielhaus, is also located in this area. Regular performances are offered at various venues: in the "Halle" with up to 600 seats, in the "Box" with 200 seats and, under the responsibility of the Junges Schauspielhaus, in the "Matchbox" with 70 seats. There are also rehearsal stages, workshops, offices as well as the LaSalle restaurant, the Moods jazz club and the Nietturm Bar with a view over the whole of Zurich-West. You can even rent the listed industrial hall and hold events of all kinds.

Bananas need to ripen

Not far from the Schiffbau, there is another relatively new event location: the Bananenreiferei on Pfingstweidstrasse. Here too, the operating company SalsaRica AG mixes industrial charm with good infrastructure and uses it for all kinds of events. This can be a public "over-40" dance night, a product presentation or even a seminar. Event room 1, for example, has an area of 368 m2 and can accommodate 100 guests for a seminar and even 160 with theater seating. There are also other rooms and a 250 m² terrace.

The old paper mill

On the other side of Zurich, in the Enge district, seasoned event professionals Frédéric Bron and Samuel Graf have been working in the event sector for over a decade. The Sihl was also an important industrial location for over a hundred years and therefore also an employer. Bron presents his current offering: "The two locations Papiersaal and Folium as well as the Rüsterei restaurant are located in the brick building with the small lattice windows typical of 1886. For decades, the final stages of the papermaking process took place in these rooms, mostly on the assembly line, hence the depth of the rooms. At the beginning of the 1970s, the global economic crisis also affected this industrial location and parts of the site were gradually closed."

Award Special Location

In the 1990s, an alternative culture emerged in which artists, Dadaists, squatters and party organizers used the empty spaces for their own purposes. Some traces of this second era are still visible in the form of graffiti and convey the zeitgeist of those years. Credit Suisse and Swiss Prime Site then bought the site and put the space of the two listed old locations out to tender for public use. Frédéric Bron proudly comments: "We won the competition for the use of these spaces and have been running them since 2007 with the company Prägebüro GmbH. And in 2016, we won the Swiss MICE Award in the Special Location category." Bron and Graf, who manages the Corporate Event Unit, produce around 130 MICE mandates every year and around 70 public events in the Papiersaal, such as concerts, parties, literary clubs and talks. This means that they can enjoy an occupancy rate of around 250 days a year.

Opportunities and challenges

For the pre-office makers, it is clear that they cannot just offer themselves as landlords of square meters, but must show potential customers that they can be involved in all processes if required. This means that they can present their own solutions in the areas of technical production, space utilization, guest flow, presentation types, content and cuisine. This expertise is also showcased at the annual Frontend Conference, which takes place on all premises and is co-organized by the Prägebüro. Commenting on current demand, Samuel Graf says: "With the exception of the banking sector, companies' average budgets have more or less returned to normal after a three-year slump. Nevertheless, it can be observed that the value and return of employee events are still fundamentally underestimated. Of course, budgets also depend on corporate strategy and corporate culture. But we can and want to advise those responsible so that they can create valuable and meaningful company events and are then also prepared to invest good money in them."

Willi Frauenfelder adds that companies are primarily looking for events that stand out in some way. "Budgets are being used more carefully and in a more targeted way, but if the ideas are right and if the target audience can really be reached with the events, then companies are also prepared to buy accordingly. In Hall 710, we can't score points in the area of catering because we outsource it to the Eulachpark restaurant. But in infrastructure and logistics all the more so."