In the dispute over the retail structure, land use and soil sealing in the narrow Inn valley, the citizens of the Upper Bavarian municipality of Oberaudorf (Rosenheim district) will probably have to vote on the location of an additional supermarket and a drugstore. A citizens’ initiative, which opposes the plans promoted by the municipal council for a more than two and a half hectare and previously undeveloped field near the center of the village, has according to its own information collected enough signatures within a week to bring about a referendum. Mayor Matthias Bernhardt reserves the right, in his own words, to propose to the municipal council a simultaneous council request for each supermarket.
Bernhardt and the majority of the municipal council see a need for a new, larger supermarket plus drugstore both for the Oberaudorfers themselves and for the many guests in the holiday resort. Until now, customers from Oberaudorf often had to drive to neighboring towns. The opponents of the project are of the opinion that the previous supermarket, which was located directly next to the open field, could be expanded and modernized instead. A food discounter is to move into its building after the opening of the new supermarket, which the critics believe represents a further threat to the previously comparatively diversely structured shops in the immediate center of town. They fear a lot of additional traffic from nearby Tyrol, especially because of the drugstore.