Wilde Renate’s rent has “more than doubled in recent years” due to Berlin real estate investor Gijora Padovicz’s stranglehold over the area.
Berlin’s clubsterben, or death of clubs, looks like it’s about to claim another casualty. Electronic music club Wilde Renate, also known as Salon zur Wilden Renate, will be forced to close at the end of 2025 after an 18-year run barring some kind of significant intervention.
In a statement shared with Resident Advisor, Wilde Renate’s team cited rising costs and the property owner apparently preventing them from extending its lease as having forced their hand. “The reason for this is the expiry of the lease agreement with the notorious property investor Gijora Padovicz,” it read. “Despite intensive efforts to find an extension to the contract or alternative solutions, the club operators have to face the fact that Renate will no longer be able to continue in its current form.”
The Padovicz Group, according to the statement, is infamous for “maximising profits through rent hikes” that lead to “displacement and evictions.” Among the company’s numerous properties in the area is Watergate, another long-running Berlin nightlife institution.
“The ousting of Renate is not an isolated case,” the statement argues. It goes on to say that “clubs and other socio-cultural institutions in Berlin are repeatedly threatened by similar developments,” and that such establishments are “important places of encounter, exchange and creative development that characterise Berlin internationally.”
Wilde Renate opened in 2007 in what was then an abandoned apartment block. Offering three dancefloors along with an outdoor area, it has billed artists like PTK, Florian Kruse, and Kendal over the years.
Although Wilde Renate’s team seems fairly convinced that it will “have to close its doors at the current location at the end of 2025,” they don’t appear to have given up all hope. “Renate is and will remain a vital part of Berlin’s club culture, and we will keep fighting to ensure it continues to be a place of music, dance, and community in the future,” they said.