Anyone who drives into the city on Wolfratshauser Straße from Pullach, looks between Solln and Obersendling at the only high-rise skyline in the south of Munich and, given the open fields in front of it, wonders how long this green belt will continue to exist.
Not only since Siemens AG gave up its company sports grounds (“Sportpark”) on Siemensallee ten years ago, the fields bordering on it to the south and east, reaching as far as the Isar slope, have become the object of desires and fears that should now come to an end : As longed for by residents and local politicians, the city is coming back to an old project to merge the free areas with the sports park, which is already under landscape protection, and the “Siemenswäldchen” to the west to form a 40 hectare “Isar-Solln Landscape Park” and thus to keep it permanently free from development, as a green corridor and fresh air corridor or “cold air generation area”.
The municipal planning committee decided on Wednesday to restart a procedure for placing under protection that had already been started in 2005 and was later suspended. The factions of the CSU and FDP who wanted to see a partial development examined were outvoted, as far as this is compatible with the air corridor.
In the urban open space and biotope network, the area creates a loose connection between Waldfriedhof and Südpark in the northwest, Forstenrieder Park in the southwest and Isar Valley in the east. A “heather rest” south of the sports park, the green edge of the fields and the deciduous forests on Wolfratshauser Strasse are considered to be of particular ecological value.
The first protection procedure was interrupted after five years in 2010/2011 – on the one hand by amendments to the law in the federal and state governments, on the other hand because the pressure of the settlement made it advisable to examine a “development compatible with landscape protection”.
Shortly afterwards, in the spring of 2011, Siemens AG announced that it would close its sports park, popular with old and remaining Siemensians, while the residential towers on the “south side” grew up north of it on the former company headquarters.
Its builder Hubert Haupt was interested in the park, as was the Patrizia Group and other private stakeholders, before the city bought the 14-hectare area in 2017 and thus secured it as a future public green space and (school) sports grounds. In close collaboration with the citizens, the district committee has meanwhile repeatedly called for the protection of the neighboring land to the south and east, mostly owned by farmers, where building boards from all too researched investors were already in place in the 2000s.
A lane of fresh air above the Isar could not be wide enough, the city councilor believes
With the restart of the procedure, the city is now striving for a “legally resilient” protection ordinance. CSU city councilor Alexander Reissl campaigned in vain in the committee for an amendment supported by the FDP, which should enable peripheral development and ecological upgrading of the remaining areas. He referred to the corresponding red-black plans from the 2014-20 period of office, as well as what he believed to be a moderate quality of stay in the fields and fields.
For Jörg Hofmann (FDP), their use for the fresh air supply would justify a protected area, but is in question – at least the presentations did not provide any evidence. The answer from City Planning Councilor Elisabeth Merk that a fresh air corridor above the Isar could not be wide enough did not convince Hofmann either. The Liberals finally requested an adjournment and, unlike the CSU, voted against restarting the process even after the failure of the amendment.
Mayor Dieter Reiter apparently sees himself in conflict and regrets that the former town hall coalition could not have deepened the plan for a partial development. He supports the current decision, even if it does not help much in the search for new building space, given the general “bite resistance” that still prevails in the matter of high-rise buildings, according to Reiter.