No one mourns the loss of the Fina multi-storey car park between Hofbräuhaus and Altstadtring, which was torn down a year ago. The new construction of two residential and commercial buildings in the square between Hildegardstrasse, Neuturmstrasse and Hochbrückenstrasse promises a visual gain for the district, but initially it makes acoustic demands, especially for pupils and teachers at the elementary school on Herrnstrasse. The major construction site is about 15 meters from Munich’s most central school building.
It got particularly loud there from mid-October, when the property developer Wöhr + Bauer began to prepare the civil engineering for the complex. The first test drilling had temporarily brought noise peaks of more than 80 decibels. The school family was not told what the deafening drone was all about, criticize Christine Bénard from the primary school parents’ council and Stefan Blum (CSU), the representative for the Herrenschule in the Altstadt-Lehel district committee.
The criticism is aimed primarily at the contact persons of the city
Your criticism is not primarily aimed at the developer, but at the school department (RBS), which officially took over the communication, but then shrouded itself in silence. Pupils, teachers and parents are certainly not overly sensitive in the heart of the city and by no means expect a noiseless construction site, says Bénard. She is less angry about the noise itself than about the fact that the contact persons in the department have permanently put their e-mail addresses on an out-of-office message – with the note that they are overloaded. Blum also finds that RBS “didn’t take its job seriously” and, for example, didn’t pass on the interim results of a noise report for a year and a half.
In the heart of the city: the construction site in place of the former Fina multi-storey car park on Neuturmstrasse, Hildegardstrasse and Hochbrückenstrasse.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
There are now signs of improvement: During an on-site visit, representatives of the client promised technical improvements. In addition, they want to inform school management and parents directly with the consent of the RBS in the future. A seven meter high noise protection wall is to shield the construction site to some extent. In addition, the containers to be set up soon will be relocated in such a way that they act as an additional bulwark against the noise. However, as the experts have calculated, the sound level can only be dampened to the 61 decibels, which is just classified as tolerable, with the windows closed.
A permanently installed ventilation system, as requested by the parents and school management to deal with the pandemic, is not feasible in terms of time and money. Among other things, pipes would have to be laid in the false ceilings. However, Wöhr + Bauer agrees to help with a partial solution, for which only window segments would have to be removed. In addition, the intention is to move particularly noisy work to the holiday periods as far as possible.
It is certain that it will be really loud again for at least four weeks: in the course of the construction work for the basement floors, holes will soon be drilled up to 14 meters deep and the shafts will then be filled with reinforced concrete. In the future, the builders want to use a newsletter to inform those directly affected about the upcoming load every two weeks. Another immediate measure is meanwhile benefiting the local residents more than the students: in the future, noisy work should only start at eight o’clock, one hour later than permitted by law.