People in the south of Munich have been able to use their new sports park for a month. They play basketball, beach volleyball and the tennis variant pickleball on the former Siemens company sports facility, or they train their muscles on the fitness course.
But these options are only temporary use. In a few years, a new district sports facility including tennis courts and a public park will be built on the seven-hectare area (equivalent to around ten football fields) in Obersendling, south of Siemensallee and east of the Munich-Lenggries railway line.
To do this, the city must draw up a new development plan. The resolution for this is on the agenda for the city council’s planning committee this Wednesday, but is expected to be postponed. The whole thing will be embedded in the 40-hectare landscape protection area (LSG) “Landschaftspark Isar-Solln”, which the city wants to develop between Aidenbachstrasse and Wolfratshauser Strasse.
The history of the sports facility goes back a long way. Siemens operated the Hermann von Siemens Sports Park there for decades. In 2011, the company largely shut it down and sold the area to the city in 2017. What remains is the tennis operation, which is backed by the Siemens Tennis Club (STC), which is open to anyone interested.
After many years, a draft resolution from the planning department for the redesign is now available. This provides for the district sports facility, among other things, a triple gymnasium, a school swimming pool and two football pitches, one of which has stands. The tennis club’s facilities will be retained and will be modernized. The entrance building to the old Siemens sports park, which was recently listed, will also remain standing and will become a kiosk. Another goal of the development is to integrate the valuable tree population in the best possible way.
The reason why it took so long to develop this concept is, among other things, that numerous departments in the city administration are involved: the Department for Education and Sport (RBS), which will operate the district sports facility in the future and therefore act as the developer, and the construction department , which is responsible for the park, as well as the municipal department, which negotiates the leasehold agreement with the tennis club, and the Department for Climate and Environmental Protection (RKU) because of the planned landscape park. It can still be assumed that there will be “an extensive need for coordination,” according to the template.
The planning department, which is responsible for development plans, is now in charge. In the submission, city planning officer Elisabeth Merk also explains why it is necessary to initiate a process that will last several years for a new development plan for a new sports facility where there has been a sports facility for decades.
The new buildings for the district sports facility are “not compatible with (…) a landscape protection ordinance” that currently applies to the area. Merk also writes that the scope of the large landscape park must be changed. Ultimately, it is the building and planning law that is now forcing the city to make major and costly efforts – which in turn conflicts with the budgetary austerity constraints.
A geothermal plant could also be built in the southwest
The planning department calculates costs of 300,000 euros for the entire process, spread over the years 2025 to 2028. However, the first tranche of 20,000 euros did not make it into the key data decision for the 2025 budget. That’s why Merk now wants to distribute the planning costs across the budgets from 2026 to 2028. And the major investments would only come afterwards anyway. At the beginning of September, Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) estimated the construction of the district sports facility at 35 to 40 million euros. It remains to be seen whether this money will be available towards the end of the decade.
And there is another imponderable: the municipal utilities, the planning department and the RKU are currently examining possible locations for new geothermal plants in the southwest of Munich. This is needed so that the city can move closer to its goal of making the district heating supply CO₂-free.
A possible location is the former Siemens sports facility and its immediate surroundings. However, all departments involved agree that a geothermal system is not compatible with the planned park and sports facility. Merk also explains that a geothermal system could even make the designation of the landscape protection area “legally vulnerable”. The city is facing the next fundamental debate about what is the right use for its limited space.