Recently it had become quiet in the sometimes heated debate about a possible location for a new clinic in the western district. Even suspiciously quiet. But now District Administrator Stefan Frey has come up with a surprise: A new hospital could now be built in Herrsching on Seefelder Straße – on the area that was once intended for the new Herrsching grammar school, but for which all land negotiations had failed at the time . That has now apparently changed. As Frey confirmed to SZ on request, the property negotiations there were successful. They have already agreed “by handshake”, but there is still no signed sales contract.
Specifically, it is about an area of almost 8,000 square meters, sufficient, as Frey says, to build a new clinic together with the land owned by the Herrsching community there – a total of around 18,000 square meters. There are probably several reasons why Frey can now come up with completely different negotiation results than at the grammar school: The district needs less space for a clinic than for a school and thus fewer contracts with property owners. In addition, he can also pay a little better than back then. Around 70 euros per square meter were specified by the local authority at the time. According to reports it was now about a price of “less than 200” per square meter, so significantly more. In contrast to the grammar school, it was no longer about “tied business”. That means that the demand of some owners at the time to only sell against building permits did not play a role this time, according to Frey. However, he did not want to comment on other topics of the conversation. “That was confidential.”
With this turn, a new building on Seefelder Strasse in Herrsching is becoming more and more apparent, even if the Starnberg clinic director Thomas Weiler still reacts cautiously to the latest negotiation results: “I only believe this when there is a notarized contract.” Nevertheless: The decision to build a new building there is likely to be the best possible alternative.
An area also provided for this purpose south of the cemetery in Hechendorf is located in the middle of the landscape protection area. And nature conservationists – such as the citizens’ initiative Eichenallee (BI) around Ortwin Gentz, who sits on the municipal council in the joint parliamentary group with the Greens, and the Bund Naturschutz in the district – had many means against a possible sealing of the ecologically valuable areas and flora and fauna. Habitats fought: for example with an online petition. In addition, after the majority of the citizens voted in favor of building there after a request for a council in the summer, they had called for a planning stop for Seefeld and received the support of the parliamentary group leader of the Landtag Greens, Ludwig Hartmann.
Should a new clinic arise in Herrsching, the question arises as to what could then be done with the area of the current Schindlbeck Clinic.
(Photo: Arlet Ulfers)
District Administrator Stefan Frey was also aware of the problems with this location. He himself sounded skeptical when it came to feasibility: The district council would ultimately have to decide whether to remove the area from landscape protection. And that, he often said, “shouldn’t be easy”. In order to secure health care in the western district, for which there is also considerable time pressure due to the funding, he had always insisted on several alternative locations – and therefore did not give up the property negotiations for Seefelder Straße in Herrsching. However, the expansion of the Schindlbeck Clinic always had priority, because this was already specified by the last decision-maker in this matter, the Ministry of Health.
Frey has now been informed: “We have now been asked to check whether a clinic with 10,000 to 16,000 square meters and around 200 beds on the Schindlbeck property would be feasible.” A planner will therefore be commissioned to carry out the study, the results of which will then have to be submitted to the Ministry of Health. A parallel procedure, which, however, according to the current building law, has little chance of success there.
Frey can count on the approval of the Herrsching municipal council for a new building on Seefelder Strasse: The news of the new property deal was received “very positively”, as Mayor Christian Schiller said on request. What could happen to the Schindlbeck Clinic in the future is still completely open. Frey announced that he would only decide on this in agreement with the municipality.
In Seefeld, on the other hand, the enthusiasm might not have been quite as great. According to Mayor Klaus Kögel, there are still “some who would like a clinic in the community.” For him, however, it is only about one thing: “To maintain health care in the western district.”