The old house was an eyesore – so dilapidated on the outside that the city had the sidewalk blocked off to prevent a passerby being injured by falling masonry, rotting inside, full of pigeons and rats. The Riedwirt on the corner of Schwanthalerstrasse and Schiesstättstrasse, built around 1860 and actually a listed building, was long past its good days when a doner kebab maker tried his luck there in the noughties. He became the namesake of this junk property in a prime location, which from then on was known as the “kebab shop” on the Schwanthalerhöhe. It stood empty for 15 years, a symbol of wasted space, until the demolition excavator came in spring 2020. But the ardent desire from the district to at least build apartments now went unheeded. Biermeier Bauwerte GmbH is building a six-storey boarding house on the almost square corner property.
30 fully equipped apartments, an automatic parking system with seven spaces on the second basement level and storage space for at least ten bicycles are planned. “After lengthy negotiations with the various authorities,” the city issued the building permit at the end of 2021, explains Managing Director Josef Biermeier. Construction is scheduled to begin this spring. Biermeier signed a long-term lease agreement “with a reliable operator” last year, but he does not name names. The new building will not remain in the company’s portfolio, but will be sold to an investor.
Ugh in the past: The former Riedwirt was known in the district as the “Dönerhaus”, the building has long since been demolished.
(Photo: Catherine Hess)
Because Biermeier Bau values is actually specialized in apartments and would have liked to have built apartments west of the former Saturn store. But space and parking space keys threw a spanner in the works for the investor: up to 16 parking spaces would have been necessary and thus a third basement level on the property, which is just over 200 square meters. “We would have gotten into the water, and then it would have been even more expensive,” says the managing director. Instead, he predicts, “a large number of guests will now enjoy the location and the flair of the district” in the boarding house.
For the local politicians from the Schwanthalerhöhe, this is only the second-best solution. They had campaigned vehemently for new apartments for years, had asked the city to bid when the property was to be foreclosed on in 2016, and they are still disappointed today that no tenants will move into the new building, only guests. “We need nothing more urgently than affordable housing,” says city councilor Sibylle Stöhr (Greens), who is also chairwoman of the district committee.
At the time, the auction was called off again because the owner at the time raised enough money to appease his creditors. In addition, the CSU did not want to bid on the city council, and in 2016 the red-black government was still in power. In turn, there was no legal basis for expropriation, as the citizens’ assembly had called for.
So it took until 2019 until Josef Biermeier was finally awarded the contract for 4.85 million euros at the third foreclosure date. The boarding house should now be ready for occupancy in autumn or winter 2023. “You have to take note of that now,” says Sibylle Stöhr.