De Rotterdam, providing 160,000 square meters of useable space, will reach a height of 150 meters making it the largest block of its kind in the Netherlands. It has been conceived as a vertical city with three interconnected mixed-use towers accommodating offices, apartments, a hotel, conference facilities, a gym, shops, restaurants and cafés.

The towers are part of the ongoing redevelopment of the old port district of Wilhelminapier, adjacent to the Erasmus Bridge, and aim to restore the vibrant urban activity once familiar in the neighbourhood. De Rotterdam is named after one of the ships of the Holland America Line, which in decades past departed from the Wilhelminapier carrying thousands of European emigrants to the US.

MAB and OVG secured financing in partnership with Rabobank. A substantial fall in building and materials costs amid the economic crisis helped breathe new life into the plans after 10 years on the drawing board, the companies said. The project has a construction lead time of 45 months and is scheduled for completion in 2013. It will create over a thousand new jobs during the construction phase and hundreds more once the building is finished.