Sometimes it’s the small issues that need to be discussed before the big ones. For example, how the high school students, for whom their own school still has to be built, can safely come to class. For Wolfgang Büsch, Green party councilor and third mayor in Sauerlach, this is one of the “most difficult points”. It could possibly only be solved with a traffic light at the intersection of the B 13 and the Sommerstrasse – otherwise it could be “really dangerous” for the students here. In a few years.
Sauerlach has retained its rural charm as in the Altkirchen district.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
The municipality of Sauerlach is planning something big, or rather an investor. A construction project that can permanently and massively change the character of the place with its still very rural charm. And the trigger for this is the new high school, which dictates the speed of planning and implementation of the mammoth project. Or as the city planner Christian Weigl from the Goergens and Miklautz office just put it in the municipal council: “We actually don’t have any more time, especially not for multi-year planning. The experts should actually be commissioned now. We just have to start now, otherwise we don’t have a chance.”
The district is building high school number 18
The “opportunity” arose at the beginning of 2018, when the district council of the Munich district first seriously considered locating a high school in Sauerlach. This is still an astonishing development today, as the neighboring district of Ebersberg, for example, cannot manage to build a fifth high school in the absolute growth municipality of Poing with its uninterrupted influx and meanwhile more than 16,000 inhabitants – but in the district of Munich, high school number 18 is already being built . In a small place. In February 2021, the Bavarian Ministry of Culture approved the new building in Sauerlach, which, including the many small parts of the community, has just over 8,000 inhabitants.
Behind the S-Bahn underpass, through which the students are supposed to go to the high school, the wide field opens up.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
So far. Since then, amazing momentum has set in in the church. It’s no longer just about the new school. Anyone who crosses under the tracks from the S-Bahn station through the underpass and comes out east of the route can only guess what is to be built there. From the summer road, the wide field spreads out here, on the horizon the treetops of the Hofoldinger Forest tower up. In a few years, wind turbines could still tower over the forest there. It is quite possible, however, that a completely new quarter will have been created here before this, including a daycare center, medical center, high school, sports field, some eco-commercials – and living space for more than 1,200 people.
Mayor Barbara Bogner has respect for the task, but also says: “We can do it.”
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
When SPD local councilor Babak Afshar asked in the meeting whether the community could manage the grammar school at all in terms of time, Weigl gave the very sober answer: Yes, if everything is triggered now. The pressure on the municipal council, mayor Barbara Bogner (independent citizens’ association) and the town hall administration is due to a volte by the state government: the reintroduction of the nine-year high school (G9). With the return to the old path to the general higher education entrance qualification, the Free State has presented itself and above all the municipal level with a problem. It just needs more schools. The catch is that the state only provides financial support for the construction of new educational institutions if they are completed in time to accommodate the additional Abitur classes. For Sauerlach, this means, as Bogner says, that the high school must be “ready for use” by the 2027/28 school year.
The traffic, here at the roundabout in the east on Hofoldinger Straße, is already putting a strain on the place.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
The grammar school is to be built by a well-known local investor who owns the land east of the railway station and north of Hofoldinger Strasse. Actually, the municipality should bring in the property required for this, but another solution was found: a so-called hire purchase, in which the municipality pays rent for 30 or 35 years, which is then offset against a later purchase – land is expensive in the greater Munich area, also in the country. And the investor’s plans, which go far beyond a new school, will change the place, Mayor Bogner is sure of that. But not all at once. Now the land use planning has been tackled, she says, “but it always depends on the time in which everything is implemented”. A development plan can also be split, according to Bogner.
There is a reason why the planning for the entire area – for the school, the medical center, the apartments – is now to be carried out in one giant step: the traffic. Sauerlach is cut through by two main traffic arteries, one in a north-south direction, the other in an east-west direction – and the town groans under the associated load, especially during peak traffic times. And a high school and planned housing for up to 1,200 people will further increase the problem, including in the residential areas around the school. “And that’s exactly why we proposed drawing up a development plan to regulate road development,” argues the mayor. “It will be about how do we go there, where does the bus go and where does it stop. Only if we define this clearly can it all succeed.”
Some local councilors fear that the crossing of the B 13 with the Sommerstrasse could become dangerous.
(Photo: Claus Schunk)
Sauerlach is the prime example of the expansion of the school landscape in the district of Munich in recent years, grammar schools are springing up like mushrooms, and Aschheim with just over 10,000 inhabitants in the northeast and Putzbrunn in the east with almost 7,000 inhabitants also have to face the challenge to build a secondary school, the grammar school in Kirchheim is rebuilt. And the district always helps to build for the state capital and the surrounding area; more students from Munich now attend grammar schools in the district than vice versa, which is also due to the attraction of ultra-modern educational institutions. The school in Sauerlach is not only intended to cover the needs of the local community, around 900 students will one day be on their way to their Abitur there – including, according to the forecast, well over a hundred from the Miesbach district. Because the grammar school in Holzkirchen has long since reached the limit of resilience.
A citizen recently expressed concern in the municipal council that the investor in Sauerlach could overdo it with the mammoth project in the open field in Sauerlach – and the municipality would then be left with the horrendous costs. Mayor Bogner, however, was relaxed, although she also acknowledged respect for the task in the conversation. Since 2008, the former senior teacher has been the head of the town hall. And it’s not as if there was a lack of challenges: the traffic, major construction projects like the Taubenberger Hof with 100 apartments, the music school, the fire in the old town hall. But she never expected such a project, she admits. “I’m not afraid. We’ll handle it,” she says.