Not only is Amsterdam where Starbucks chose to build the corporate headquarters for its European operations, it is where the American giant built a 9,000 m² roasting plant for beans destined to become lattés and frappuccinos in every major city outside the US. Every major city except Amsterdam, that is. The Dutch won’t actually touch the stuff. “The company knows people here wouldn’t tolerate it. We’ve got a strong coffee culture of our own,” grins Paul van den Brink, the eager young marketing chief of the Schiphol Area Development Company, a body charged with extending the roll call of American and Asian beachheads that comprise Europe’s largest logistics hub. This delicious irony sums up Amsterdam. On the one hand, the Dutch capital is uniquely placed for international trade. Van den Brink doesn’t need to reel off statistics; his Renault Scenic weaves through acres and acres of familiarly branded buildings in the business parks near Schiphol Airport. On the other, the city has always done things in its own idiosyncratic way. For the best part of the last 423 years, for example, the country’s court and parliament have not sat in the capital city but in the Hague. Meanwhile, since 1981, Amsterdam has been overseen by a city government comprising a potentially chaotic mix of a local council, a powerful mayor and aldermen and 14 separate district councils. One of the city government’s least controversial plans was to reverse one far-reaching and typically offbeat decision made a century earlier. In 1889, when Amsterdam was the focus of trade in tropical products such as coffee beans, and when water was crucial to its livelihood, a huge train station was erected on three artificial islands in the throat of the River IJ, obstructing sightlines and access from both sides of the harbour. Miles of tracks and railway yards subsequently strangled any attempt to develop or prettify the surrounding area. Since the beginning of the last decade the Stationseiland, Amsterdam’s transport hub, has pretty much been regarded as ground zero. When the cranes and diggers finally disappear in around five years’ time, the site will showcase a new tram line, a new bus terminal and a road tunnel designed to prepare the area for the handling of 300,000 travellers a day. Meanwhile, the vast new train station being built under the bus terminal will provide the entire complex with a dramatic waterfront façade. This engineering feat – let alone the windfall it is predicted to generate – should be the envy of every European city, including Paris, which will be a high-speed hop away. Viewed in isolation, the scope of this public-private development would be impressive. In fact, vital though it promises to be to the city’s economy, it is merely the epicentre of several colossal urban regeneration schemes – from science parks to arts complexes – that, it is envisaged, will propel Amsterdam into a new golden age to compare with its former glory as a 17th-century maritime centre.  Indeed, there is probably no other comparable city in Europe where so much construction is going on simultaneously. Amsterdam is fizzing with urban renewal and expansion, including the rediscovery of obsolete harbour districts and the expansion of the port and the airport – already the third-busiest for cargo in Europe and the fourth-busiest for passengers – as well as the creation of new infrastructure and the layout and infill of new business and office districts. High-profile projects include a 9.5 km-long, €1.5bn metro line under the River IJ behind Centraal Station, connecting the north and south of the city; a whole new residential district set on artificial islands; new commercial hubs in south-east Amsterdam and on the southern ring road; new uses for the waterfront on both sides of the river; and regeneration of the western suburbs. Nothing, it seems, is being left to chance as the Dutch capital attempts to reinforce its position as a favoured international business location.
Perhaps the most important project strategically is the all-embracing urban centre Zuidas (or South Axis), which engulfs Amsterdam’s main A10 ring road between the city centre and Schiphol. Far more than a glorified transport hub and architecturally notable business park, Zuidas will eventually host about 50,000 people, 14,000 of whom will call it home. It already houses the headquarters of banking group ABN AMRO, which took tent-pole position in the late 1990s, effectively underwriting the whole shebang, and the World Trade Centre Amsterdam, which was overhauled in 2002. Financial group ING plonked its head office at the western end of the zone; nearby is the Mexx Design Centre, the medical centre and an art and design college.
When completed in 2030, Zuidas will have cost around €20bn and will be a commercial, residential and recreational mini-city served by the high-speed international rail link as well as, from 2011, the north/south metro line. “Zuidas will connect countries as well as towns,” boasts spokesperson Frederijk Haentjes, who notes that there will be direct lines to Belgium, France and Germany. “By 2020, 160,000 passengers will change at the station daily.” |