The Graefelfing cultural establishment packs up: 350 chairs are part of the luggage, boxes full of stage equipment, lamps, decorative material, 60 tables and also around 3500 wine glasses. At the end of March, the community center will close its doors for more than two years. The central venue for culture in the town is being extensively renovated and remodeled, and a large construction site is being built in the middle of the town. This also means that alternative accommodation has to be found for around 450 events a year.
The library moved out of the community center at the end of the year and set up its temporary home in the former training building of the Doemens Brewery Academy. Now community center manager Jan Konarski and caretaker Richard Eder are working on gradually clearing out most of the building constructed in 1984 and organizing the major move at the beginning of April hand in hand with the building authority. However, the beginning of the great chair-moving in the municipality was made in the town hall. The renovation measures have been going on there since 2021, so that parts of the administration are still spread over three different locations in the municipality.
Only Werner Scholz’s Filmeck cinema is not affected by the construction work.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
The same will happen with the cultural sector. Only the Filmeck cinema with its own entrance can remain. Otherwise, the lectures and readings of the Literary Society, the concerts of the music association, the events of the adult education center in Würmtal, the handicrafts and flea markets, as well as the repair café and the bridge club will have new event addresses. Jan Konarski is still working on the logistics. Smaller events will be outsourced to the Doemens building, which is also where the offices of the community center will be located.
“It’s not fun, but we have no choice”
Large audiences go to the auditorium of the Kurt-Huber-Gymnasium. The Music Promotion Association and the Literary Society will find a new home here. The grand piano will be relocated there, as will the sound technology. For Konarski and Eder, in the future this means setting up everything before each event and dismantling it again at night, because the auditorium belongs to the students during the day. Klaus Stadler from the Literary Society hopes that the audience will join in. Because while the community center is located directly at the S-Bahn station, the grammar school is more remote, which could be a problem for older visitors in particular. “It’s not fun, but we have no choice,” says Stadler.
City council meetings will also be held in the auditorium. It will then be the second move for the committee, which is currently still meeting provisionally in the community center because the meeting room in the town hall is being renovated. However, Konarski does not yet have a solution for the large markets. There is still the multi-purpose hall of the grammar school, but it is pretty well occupied by the school. Maybe there will be more outside, he says: “We have to be creative.” In any case, Gräfelfing will not become a “cultural no man’s land,” he promises.
The renovation of the community center is scheduled to begin in mid-April. “It will be a huge construction site,” predicts Mayor Peter Köstler (CSU). One of the first works will be the demolition of the tower, which is in the way of the foyer redesign, to be replaced by a more distinctive new building. The work will extend well into 2025. The house will celebrate its 40th anniversary in the coming year as a major construction site.
It remains to be seen what will become of what Konarski calls the “visiting cat” during the conversion period. The cat belongs to a neighbor, but is also part of the inventory of the community center: At evening events, it roams through the rooms and sometimes listens while sitting on the stage. She also has to look for a new place to live.