The Free State of Bavaria has also had its new business partners Manuel Neuer and Johannes Rabl promise this in a contract: There will be a warm meal and drink for a maximum of 14.90 euros in the Forsthaus Valepp. If inflation continues like this, this cheap dish will also be allowed to become a little less cheap – but only to the same extent as the hereditary lease rate, which is linked to the price development, increases, which the state forests from FC Bayern goalkeeper Neuer and the Tegernseer restaurateurs Rabl for the building ensemble in the Schliersee mountains. In return, Neuer and Rabl are allowed to take over the traditional Forsthaus for the next 99 years – as a “down-to-earth inn for every budget”, as Rabl assured on the sidelines of the crucial meeting of the budget committee on Tuesday in the state parliament.
After years of unsuccessful tenant searches, the state forests decided a while ago in favor of this leasehold solution and finally a few months ago in favor of the investor duo from Tegernsee. The local councils down in Schliersee also approved their concept after a lap of honor with a few improvements. However, concerns were still being raised in the region that Neuer and Rabl, who runs two restaurants on Lake Tegernsee, might have in mind a posh gastronomy for private parties back there in the secluded Forsthaus.
The Association for the Protection of the Mountains, the Federation of Nature Conservation and the National Association for Homeland Care addressed a petition to the state parliament. Accordingly, the Free State should refrain from awarding Neuer and Rabl and keep the listed ensemble directly in public hands. In addition to a simple excursion restaurant with practically only summer operations, as the forester’s lodge was until 2014, the clubs imagined that a kind of museum could have been created there, in which visitors could have learned something about forestry and nature conservation in the mountains. The Bavarian Cultural Heritage Foundation, which recently took on the also traditional inn at Streichen in Chiemgau, waved it off after an on-site visit to Valepp. The cultural heritage representatives did not want to join a kind of project advisory board, as Rabl had proposed in the meantime.
The budget committee of the state parliament, which has the last word in all real estate and land transactions of the state forests, rejected the petition of the three associations unanimously on Tuesday. Immediately before that, he had approved the long-term lease agreement with Neuer and Rabl – a contract that had been fine-tuned to the last. The entire meeting had already been scheduled specifically because not all the details had been negotiated to the satisfaction of the committee by the originally planned consultation date a week earlier.
Among other things, Neuer and Rabl have now decided on a traffic concept that envisages reducing the parking lot at the Forsthaus from 60 to 34 parking spaces. The toll road of the state forests from Tegernsee to Valepp is to be provided with a barrier that remains closed after the hundredth car until another has left the valley. The road is to be completely closed from the first snowfall until Palm Sunday. Any winter overnight guests for the maximum of twelve rooms in the Forsthaus and the sauna, which is designed for a maximum of four house guests, may only be taken by the landlords by shuttle bus from Schliersee to the Forsthaus. Otherwise, this second street should remain closed to individual traffic all year round.
How they can bring in their investments of four to five million euros under these conditions is up to Neuer and Rabl. Violations of the requirements are sanctioned with fines, in extreme cases a special right of termination for the state forests and the premature so-called reversion of the property to the Free State are conceivable.
All these things will be kept under close scrutiny and, if necessary, lawsuits will be filed in court, Rudolf Neumaier, the managing director of the regional association for home care, announced in the committee on behalf of all three petitioners. Neumaier complained about the “pathetic condition” of the forester’s lodge, which had been neglected for eight years by both the state forests and the state preservationists. Otherwise, however, he was forgiving and, because of the agreements that had been negotiated in the meantime, “reasonably confident that Valepp can go back to how it was – no more and no less, especially no more. Now it’s going to be a bit more.”
“I don’t think there is a winner and a loser today,” said Rabl at the end, who can see himself and Manuel Neuer on the winning side after the bid. Now they will try to get the roof of the forester’s house sealed before winter. Rabl has not yet been able to name an opening date.