leisure
Hollandpark – The Netherlands northeast of Berlin
Theo Roelof is an investor and managing director of Hollandpark. Photo: Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB
© dpa-infocom GmbH
Would you like some Dutch flair? A ten-hectare adventure park with a windmill, slide tower and gastronomy is opening at the Barnim motorway triangle near Berlin.
A windmill can be seen from the autobahn, and next to it a 21-metre-high slide tower with six different options to slide downwards: near Berlin – in Schwanebeck in Brandenburg – a Holland adventure park is currently being built.
The large main building, which is currently being given its typical Dutch façade, houses restaurants, a market hall with typical Dutch products as well as regional products and a garden center. Admission costs will be right next door to a 3,600 square meter indoor playground and a climbing hall with 48 differently designed walls. It is scheduled to open in the spring.
The concept also includes a jungle hall in which meerkats, lorises, turtles and koi will find a home. A petting zoo with donkeys, sheep, goats and alpacas is also planned.
A dream becomes reality
Around 28 million euros flow into the project, says the investor Theo Roelofs. The Dutchman has lived in Germany for almost 30 years and runs several garden centers. The 56-year-old has had this dream for 20 years, as he says. “At the time, I was visiting an open-air museum near Amsterdam with my family – with leisurely turning windmills, small houses with dark green facades and white window frames.” In the municipality of Panketal, to which he presented his plans twelve years ago, he acquired 37 properties. The park is surrounded by so-called construction compensation areas, on which tulips and other flowers will soon bloom. The investor expects 1,000 to 1,500 visitors a day, and more on the weekends.
“It was always important to us as a municipality that this largest project in Panketal be implemented so that jobs are created and we become even more attractive as a destination,” says Mayor Maximilian Wonke (SPD). Visitors come directly from the Autobahn. Residents don’t have to be afraid of a gridlock.
Around 140 employees will take care of visitors in Holland Park. A miller is still needed for the windmill and museum to show children how flour is made from grain.