In two Corona summers, welcomed as creative life rafts for gastronomy, the pavement gardens are now threatening to become a nuisance in many places. At the end of November, the city council basically allowed the innkeepers to leave their open-air séparées in parking lots and lanes until March 2022. In fact, the cosiness (and with it the number of guests) has suffered badly from the weather since All Saints’ Day, so that many of the constructions are only perceived by residents as traffic obstacles and parking space hogs.
The district committee (BA) Altstadt-Lehel would like to change that, as gently as possible and in consultation with the hosts. Representatives of the CSU had initially called for the city council’s resolution of November 25 to be completely reversed, which the majority in the committee rejected. Instead, the district representatives rely on a detail of the council resolution, which calls on the innkeepers to dismantle “permanently unused” pavement gardens, so they are currently not issuing a carte blanche to simply leave them there until the next open-air season.
Hardly any weatherproof guests have recently been spotted in Lehel
The BA board wants to define the term “permanent” more precisely during the Christmas break and use this as a basis to determine the further course of action in January. Markus Stadler (Greens) had proposed a one-week non-use as a criterion, which the committee rejected too briefly in the discussion, among other things because bad weather phases can also temporarily paralyze well-stocked pub gardens. The committee members want to take a close look at the situation in their respective neighborhood in the coming weeks and, if necessary, speak to hosts. However, the local politicians see the execution of the city council resolution basically as the task of the district inspection. They don’t want to go on a course of confrontation with restaurateurs.
They emphasized that many innkeepers had already voluntarily dismantled orphaned pub gardens. There are also great local differences. In the nightlife district around Gärtnerplatz, for example, in the neighboring district of Ludwigsvorstadt-Isarvorstadt, the gardens would be well received even in bad weather. In Lehel, on the other hand, hardly any weatherproof guests have recently been sighted.
The BA Schwabing-Freimann, who is responsible for the catering district around Münchner Freiheit, goes further than the colleagues in the old town by calling for the council resolution to be withdrawn, i.e. a complete dismantling of all pub gardens. The systems are not only an aesthetic problem, but, as they are increasingly weathered, also a traffic hazard in winter weather, according to the reasoning in the corresponding CSU application. Like the old town CSU, the Schwabing applicants also refer to an older council decision to only allow the gardens until the end of November. Not only local residents suffering from a lack of parking spaces would have relied on this, but also those innkeepers who have already started to dismantle their pub gardens.