Stefan Forster, the head of the structural engineering department in the Hohenbrunn community, did not mince his words: “The nerves are on edge,” he said during the meeting of the local council on Thursday evening, referring to the difficult situation around the “Am Hölzl” development area. In order to bring the local politicians up to date, the architect and site manager Fan Yang and Ralf Löw, member of the management of the architectural office Wörner Traxler Richter (WTR), as well as Daniel Bernhardt from the project controller, the engineering office Hitzler, joined the committee.
And the trio had anything but good news: On the one hand, they had to report that the construction of the 25 community-owned apartments on Appeltwiese in Robert-Bosch-Strasse in the Riemerling district, originally calculated at 9.4 million euros, was up to 1.2 million euros Euro threatens to become more expensive. But that’s not all, there is also a risk of a considerable delay in the completion of the facility: this was planned for the spring of this year when construction began in February 2020 – now the last apartments should not be ready for occupancy until November. The reasons given by those responsible in the forefront are the corona crisis: The workers from Eastern Europe were not allowed to enter the country for months. In addition, there was the heavy rainfall during the summer so far, which had meant that the cover work on the underground car park was significantly hindered. And then there were also delivery bottlenecks for building materials.
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“We don’t want to avoid the bush, we want to bring in transparency,” said WTR boss Löw. The current situation is also causing him “one or two sleepless nights”, the delays cost his office 20,000 euros a month. But he should be even better off than those tenants who have already given notice of their previous apartment with the prospect of moving to their new domicile on time. They could be temporarily on the street because of the hanging game.
“It drives me when people have no living space,” said Mayor Stefan Straßmair (CSU). Of course, the municipality must be financially responsible for this, the town hall chief added. “We’ll get away with it if the deadlines that have now been communicated are met,” said Forster. “And if not, then these people have a problem,” added Straßmair.
As far as costs are concerned, the last word on price increases has not yet been spoken. The 1.2 million euros are the sum of all supplements that are claimed by the construction companies. “All of this has not yet been finalized,” said Ralf Löw from the WTR architects’ office, and on some points they have very contrary views. A statement supported by project manager Daniel Bernhardt: “The price evidence must be available, otherwise the respective claim will be reduced.”
Nevertheless, there is a risk of additional costs, which come as a surprise, as the budget originally approved by individual municipal councils was classified as very high when the decision was made two years ago. There were also critical comments on Thursday: The CSU parliamentary group chairman Anton Fritzmaier described the development as “very unfortunate” and complained that there was already a “large underfunding” when the contracts were awarded to the builders. “You have to ask critically what the tendering for a master builder was worth.” Due to the later move, it is not only unclear where the tenants could be temporarily accommodated in extreme cases, it is also about lost rental income of up to 30,000 euros per month for the community.
As far as the current schedule is concerned, in the best case scenario the first of the three residential buildings would be ready in mid-August, house two as well as the Wichtelhaus and kindergarten are planned for the end of September, and the third and last residential building for the beginning of November. Stefan Forster thinks mid-August is ambitious and expects more towards the end of the month. You have to “slide around on your knees” to get companies to work fast.
Ultimately, the committee almost unanimously approved the new maximum overall budget. “We don’t pay anything that we don’t have to,” stressed Mayor Straßmair. Only the Green Georg Bauer spoke out against the proposed resolution, he accused those responsible for the fact that both the delay and the increase in costs could have been foreseen at an early stage, but had not been communicated “transparently enough”.