That’s not what the park meant. The Art Nouveau park in Haar was to become a green flagship district, that was the intention and because of the old trees in the listed ensemble, nobody had to be accused of whitewashing when talking about living in the park. However, the residents are currently experiencing moments when they wonder whether they are living in a park chaos instead of in the park. Because the system is literally full of cars during events in the small theater Haar and also when the business in the neighboring restaurant is booming. This is often the case at the weekend, prompting a flood of protest emails from annoyed neighbors to the town hall and municipal councils.
The whole thing then had a political aftermath in the municipal council, because the SPD took up the topic and, in a hastily formulated emergency motion, asked Mayor Andreas Bukowski (CSU) to quickly implement the traffic concept in the housing estate and remedy the abuses. The CSU understood this as an attempt to make political capital out of the misery. With the majority of the other parliamentary groups, the topic was allowed to be discussed. Thomas Reichel (CSU) was particularly annoyed by what he saw as excessive alarmism: “I don’t see the pressure to act,” he said. He did not want to dispute the parking problem, but described the SPD’s action to force it onto the agenda of the municipal council at 7 p.m. with a motion at 10:47 a.m. as a political maneuver.
The Art Nouveau Park is a large construction site where people live. According to the town hall, once traffic monitoring takes action, there will be an improvement.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
The situation in the Art Nouveau Park has been tense for months. The former park-like clinic area, some of which has 100-year-old trees, is undergoing a radical change to become a residential area. Many trees were felled and the felling continues, as the head of the building department, Josef Schartel, admitted when there were also critical questions about this at the most recent municipal council meeting. The explosiveness is increased by the fact that the quarter is no longer just felled and built, but also lived in. The new buildings have been occupied for a long time, and many of the new residents, who expected a privileged residential area in the “Art Nouveau Park”, struggle with one or the other annoyance.
Construction vehicles are on the move in front of the front doors because the old Art Nouveau buildings are being rebuilt and renovated step by step. There are also visitors to the popular theater and restaurant. This is also a problem because until recently the paths in the district were not designated as public roads and therefore no traffic rules applied. But that is changing. As Horst Blank, the head of construction technology in the town hall, explained, signs are being installed or at least set up temporarily. The municipal traffic control, where there was a temporary shortage of staff, should take action and issue parking tickets.
Mayor Bukowski speaks of a “window application”
The residents of the Art Nouveau Park are also annoyed because the district is actually designed as an almost car-free area. For this purpose, underground car parks were built and a large area of the site was dug up. However, Mayor Andreas Bukowski admits that the garages are little used. Foreign visitors to cultural events in particular avoided the underground car parks. Bukowski promises improvements, for example in the signage for underground car parks and parking machines. A payment option with an EC card should also be set up at the machines.
Because the SPD nevertheless identified an “urgency”, poison arrows flew back and forth between the CSU and the SPD in the municipal council. And Thomas Reichel went on to fundamentally criticize the transport planning in the district, complaining that because the train station was within walking distance, many had been mistakenly assuming that people would come to the theater by S-Bahn. A flat misjudgment, he thinks. Mayor Bukowski closed the debate with the remark that the SPD’s initiative was purely a “shop window application”. The SPD then sent a press release to state: “The SPD takes the problems of the residents in the Art Nouveau Park seriously!” Group leader Thomas Fäth assures: “We’ll stay tuned!”