Can you still afford that? In view of inflation and price increases, not only private individuals ask themselves this question. Municipalities also have to realize that they can no longer handle large projects: For example, Schweinfurt recently decided to cancel the state garden show planned for 2026 – the costs have more than doubled compared to the original estimate. Such a fate does not threaten the Kirchheimer Landesgartenschau, as the organizers assure. Local development is closely linked to the major event: the park built for the 2024 State Garden Show is intended to connect the previously separate parts of Kirchheim and Heimstetten.
However, there have been discussions about the costs in the village not only since the outbreak of the Russian war against Ukraine and the resulting price increases. Already last year, when the budget situation was considered uncertain due to the pandemic, there were considerations of austerity measures – among other things, some local politicians unsuccessfully called for a planned viewpoint to be abandoned. In September 2021, the municipal council capped the construction costs at 16 million euros.
“We are currently in the fortunate position of being within this range with the costs,” says Maximilian Heyland, Managing Director of Kirchheim 2024 GmbH. Since most of the tenders for the individual construction measures have already taken place, there is price certainty in many areas. With the remaining tenders, one is of course dependent on the world market: It is well known that the prices for certain materials such as steel or wood are rising sharply. Spending would therefore be continuously monitored, Heyland said. “Before each new tender, we check how we can implement it. But at the moment we are confident that we can meet the cost cap.”
The “point of no return” has long been reached
According to Sophia Schreib, press spokeswoman for Kirchheim 2024 GmbH, a point has now been reached at which it is difficult to make excessive savings anyway: major changes would tend to cause costs because they would necessitate large-scale replanning. “If you take something out of the planning, it affects the environment because everything is interlinked,” says Scheib. Ultimately, such plan changes would also jeopardize the goal of being able to open the State Horticultural Show on May 15, 2024 on time.
According to Schreiber, nothing will change in terms of financing either: As planned, more than half of the costs can be covered by subsidies granted by the Free State, the European Union and the government of Upper Bavaria. If the sum for the construction of the park reaches the cost cap of 16 million euros, the municipality would have to pay around 7.2 million itself.
And the preparations are already well advanced: the first of a total of 318 ornamental apple trees, which are intended to symbolize the Kirchheim babies born in 2021, 2022 and 2023, have just been planted in the later garden sphere of the park between Martin-Luther-Straße and the toboggan hill . They will also be preserved after the garden show. In addition to the so-called vintage groves, a meadow orchard will also be laid out on which, among other things, apple trees of various varieties, pears and walnut trees will grow. Perennial plants such as garden strawberries and woodruff should also be available there for the Kirchheimers to harvest. From the spring of 2023, the plantings will begin in the “meadow”, “water”, “wilderness” and “forest” spheres.