After two years of construction, the Acmesa Tower is ready for the first tenants. On May 11, the first residents of the highest residential tower in Assen will receive the keys to their new home.
Construction started in 2024 on the site of the former Acmesa dairy factory. The tower and the adjacent buildings together have 77 apartments. A cow’s head has been incorporated into the facade of the building as a reference to the former destination of the site.
Ron Möller, project manager at Brands Bouw, is relieved that the tower is now ready. “These were two intensive years,” he says. “Partly due to the limited building space we had.” For Möller it is a strange idea that construction is now over: “We have been busy with it for so long. After Monday it is as if no construction ever took place, which feels strange.”
In September last year, King Willem-Alexander and then minister Mona Keijzer visited the Acmesa site. They entered into discussions with future tenants, among other things. Assen is part of the NOVEX program, which includes the ambition to build 36,000 homes in the Groningen-Assen region in the coming years.
Approximately 1,350 new homes are to be built in the city center of Assen, along the Stadsboulevard and in the Havenkwartier. The Acmesa site is one of the projects within this development.
From 1908 to 2007, the Acmesa dairy factory stood on the site of the current residential tower. The Asser Cooperative Milking Plant and Steam Dairy Factory mainly produced cheese and other dairy products and marketed, among other things, the custard lip.
After closing in 2005, the factory was demolished in 2007. The site then lay fallow for years. Previous plans for an office building fell through, partly as a result of the economic crisis. Only after remediation of the land and new housing plans could the redevelopment really start. This brings life back to the Acmesa site after almost twenty years.