All grown up and nowhere to work: Berlin runs short of office space

Outside view of former Kaufhof department store near Ostbahnhof in Berlin, Germany, June 12, 2018. [Reuters]

Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Wall, “cool” Berlin is booming, with some 40,000 people moving to the German capital every year to work not just at its vibrant tech start-ups but also increasingly at big multinational firms.

As the city once seen as a low-cost government backwater comes into its own as a European business center, office supply has not been able to keep up with the sharp rise in demand.