New fodder in the dispute over the leasing of the premises for the new museum of the future in Nuremberg: A real estate appraisal, which was commissioned by the Landtag opposition and which is available to the German press agency, comes to the conclusion that the premises in Nuremberg’s Augustinerhof are well above the market price were rented. “The lease shows a considerably lessor-friendly tendency to the detriment of the tenant,” says the report commissioned by the FDP, the Greens and the SPD.
Furthermore, the lease agreement contains a number of regulations that can lead to a higher cost burden for the tenant, according to the report. This needs to be explained. The tenant, the German Museum in Munich, also pays money for space that should not be included in the calculation.
The parliamentary groups of the SPD, Greens and FDP want to present the report on Thursday in Munich. The new future museum is a branch of the German Museum in Munich. The Nuremberg house is still in the preparations for the opening.
Both the rent amount and the general conditions are not only unusual, but also require a lot of explanation, said Sebastian Körber (FDP). “This is a scandal with immense dimensions.” Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) would have to explain this.
“Not only in the selection of the location and the allocation was done in an unclean and non-transparent manner. The Free State either let itself be ripped off when it came to renting or it was deliberately not looked very closely,” emphasized Verena Osgyan (Greens).
The report revealed the entire financial extent: “The Bavarian taxpayers were massively harmed,” said Volkmar halib (SPD). Now it has to be clarified who is politically and legally responsible for this damage to the taxpayers in Bavaria.
The Landtag FDP had already criticized in January that the rent of 40 euros per square meter was too expensive for the location under the given circumstances. The full rental price would be paid for light and air shafts. When the contract for the prestige project in Söders hometown was signed, he was still finance minister.
The Free State reimburses the Deutsches Museum for the annual rental costs of 2.5 million euros for the next 25 years through a financing agreement. In addition, the state has pumped 28 million euros into the project as start-up funding – in total, the museum will cost taxpayers more than 90 million euros.
The building is rented by a company owned by the Nuremberg entrepreneur Gerd Schmelzer. The opposition also wants to clarify a donation from the entrepreneur to the CSU – a few months after the lease was signed. Schmelzer told the “Nürnberger Nachrichten” in January: “I donate every now and then, it has nothing to do with any construction projects.”
The appraisers from NC Group Real Estate Valuation GmbH come to the conclusion that a large part of the annual rent requires explanation. Of the 2.5 million euros, only a portion of 1.09 million euros is unequivocally conclusive, the rest of around 1.4 million euros requires further explanations.
“It was found that around 18.4 percent of the net space was rented, which is actually not rental space according to the real estate industry standards,” the report said. In addition, the tenant’s bargaining power as part of the public sector with the best creditworthiness and the fact that the museum, as an anchor tenant, is important for renting out the remaining space, “apparently fell short in the negotiations”. The landlord can earn a considerable amount of additional income from the sale of the facility because he has a branch of the Deutsches Museum as a tenant.