Arslan said that she had been aware of the intention to sell the Residence Hotel building for some time. Until the very end, she had hoped to be able to continue running her hair salon even after a change of ownership. But this has now been settled. She does not know what will happen to the building which dates from the 1990s. The future of the closed Bristol Hotel on Prinz-Albert Straße on the other side of the railway line also remains unclear.

So far, she has only heard that the Residence Hotel is to be gutted. Former hotel employees told the GA they had heard it was to be converted into a retirement residence. So far, this has remained a persistent rumour. The new owner will probably know. However, we have not been able to find out yet who has purchased the Residence Hotel.

As reported, the Centro-Hotels Group had decided to abandon the Residence Hotel shortly after the Bristol Hotel was closed down. Central-Hotels Group cited the current economic situation in connection with the pandemic and the lack of funds for urgently needed investments in the hotel as the reason. The decision had been made by mutual agreement between the tenant and the landlord, the Group said.

In the case of the Bristol, on the other hand, it is well-known that the owner of the former Zurich site on the corner of Prinz-Albert-Strasse and Poppelsdorfer Allee - the real estate company Corpus Sireo - wants to demolish the high-rise construction and build flats on the site. This would be possible as well, according to the land-use plan. However, the Greens and the Left Party had recently initiated a discussion in the Monument Committee about investigations as to whether the building, constructed according to the plans of the renowned Bonn architect Ernst van Dorp, who died in 2003, may be eligible for listed building status. The hotel is after all an architectural testimony of its time, they said.

The Bristol was opened in 1972. In response to the GA question of whether an investigation into listed building status had been carried out in the meantime, the City of Bonn said: Following a joint site inspection on 17 May by the LVR Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments in the Rhineland (LVR-ADR) and the Lower Heritage Protection Authority (UDB), the result of the inspection was summarised in an experts’ report by the LVR-ADR and sent to the UDB at the end of May. Content: "It is not a listed building in the sense of Section 2 of the Monument Protection Act NW due to the multiple conversions discovered and to the lost urban context from the other new buildings that have been demolished in the meantime." Nevertheless, according to the LVR-ADR, it is a "significant building substance that needs to be documented". The heritage protection authorities therefore suggest that the building interior is documented with photographs and that certain furnishings are transferred to museums. The owner has already been informed accordingly.

When asked which furnishings are concerned, Markus Schmitz from the municipal press office said: For example, the ceiling and wall panel cut-outs from the "Churfürst" hall, the illuminated signs (Bristol and Majestic) and the ceramic walls at the entrance to the restaurant, as well as the tiles from the hotel swimming pool. From a monument preservation point of view, a ceiling chandelier, table lamps and the balustrade elements from the café, for example, should also be preserved in a museum.

(Original text: Lisa Inhoffen, Translation: Caroline Kusch)