Westerstraat apartment complex gives downtown Emmen a boost

Garage boxes make way for 29 starter homes

At the edge of downtown Emmen, construction is underway on 29 starter apartments with an office plinth on the first floor. The area was long seen as a rotten tooth. The outdated garage boxes next to the apartments are now making way for an L-shaped building that Brands Bouw will deliver in May this year.

"The site has a long history. Project developer Peter van Dijk succeeded in making a suitable plan for it, which we have been allowed to execute. It concerns sixteen two-room apartments and eight three-room apartments that will be rented out by housing corporation Lefier. The other five apartments on the first floor are rented by an investor," says Ron Möller, project manager at Brands Bouw.

Intensive deepening

The new apartment building consists of ductile slab floors with a compression layer and sand-lime interior walls. Because the commercial space had to consist of one section, it was constructed of precast columns with steel beams supporting the floors above. Says Möller, "The first floor was an intensive floor to build, where various materials come together." Another challenge was getting all the installations into the small 40 m2 apartments, he says. "Not all the pipes could be concealed in the hollow-core slab floors. We therefore made suspended ceilings behind which installations are still concealed." Consequently, there is quite a bit of technology in the Zero-Meter homes. The apartments are heated with a heat pump and there are solar panels on the roof of the complex and the adjacent restaurant. There is also a heat recovery system.

A few apartments are over 50 square meters. These get their own parking spaces and balconies, which are attached later. This way they were not in the way during the structural work. The result is elegant balconies with a very thin floor. The bronze-yellow masonry ensures that the building has an attractive appearance in its surroundings. Möller: "All homes are delivered including kitchen and plumbing. The walls are wallpaper-ready. So the residents can move in quickly."  

Beautiful from the scaffolding

Completion is scheduled for May. Despite all the corona issues and a shortage of construction materials, the project still went on schedule. "With that, we have been lucky. We didn't suffer much from corona by buying materials early. We pulled hard to make it on schedule," Möller said. According to him, the building gives downtown Emmen a positive boost. "Before we started, we coordinated a lot with the municipality and local residents. It was a tight construction site, so we had to consider delivery times and consult well. In terms of planning, it went well and we delivered the quality we promised. The building came out of the scaffolding very nicely, so we are proud of that."