A bang in Unterföhring: The planned sports park on Mitterfeldallee opposite the school campus is history. In its meeting on Thursday evening, the local council followed the recommendation of the finance committee and buried the 100 million project against the votes of CSU parliamentary group leader Manfred Axenbeck and Günter Peischl (PWU). The background is the uncertain financial development and the situation in the construction sector with a shortage of materials and sharply rising prices, as Mayor Andreas Kemmelmeyer from the party-free electorate (PWU) explained.
“It would be a miracle if construction projects could be realized within the given budget,” he said. Such an investment is “a big risk”, not to mention the maintenance costs, according to Kemmelmeyer. The will to save now seems to have arrived in Unterföhring, which has so far been so rich. The step was very difficult for everyone, but “we cannot afford and maintain the sports park”. Especially since the municipality has other large and expensive construction projects going on, such as the new fire station, the building yard, the renovation of the primary school and the new town hall in the future town center near the train station and the construction of affordable apartments. That is why Unterföhring must now see “that we are not running out of money,” said the mayor. On this basis, the Sportpark project must be stopped and discontinued. According to the city hall administration, planners and architects should now “finalize” the calculation.
What will happen to the learning pool?
However, the municipality has already spent almost 20 million euros on the planning of the sports park, in which a public indoor swimming pool including a restaurant and sauna as well as sports facilities for various sports clubs, and the preparatory earthworks on the property in question south of Mitterfeldallee. Kemmelmeyer does not see the fact that the community has literally wasted an enormous amount of money. This “crater landscape”, in front of which there is a large building board with a simulation of the sports park, should, according to him, soon be leveled and modeled. The mayor did not want to give the mayor a complete rejection of the learning pool requested by the local swimming club at the citizens’ meeting at the end of October. “We have to see if it could work,” said Kemmelmeyer, not looking really hopeful.
CSU man Axenbeck praised the foresight of the finance committee, which in the first round of budget discussions came to the conclusion to put the sports park to the test for reasons of economy. However, he pleaded not to bury the project entirely, “but to slim it down further” and only build it in sections. You could do without an indoor swimming pool, underground car park and clubhouse. “Unterföhring has been waiting for this sports park for 30 years,” reminded Axenbeck and warned against letting the planners come up with a final bill and thus write off almost twelve million euros for drafts and work. It is better to wait a year or two and then think again about how the project can be implemented more cheaply in a smaller form. Mayor Kemmelmeyer and the majority in the local council did not want to be convinced by Axenbeck’s argument.
The planning for the new sports park on Mitterfeldallee opposite the Unterföhringen school campus was not a good star right from the start. Due to escalating costs, the municipal council had already imposed a construction freeze on the project in mid-May 2018 following an urgency request by the SPD parliamentary group, in October of the same year the plans purred together, and at the end of 2019, after a renewed increase in expenditure, a cost cap of 100 million euros followed The building permit was finally granted in March 2020. Now the sports park in Unterföhring is perdu.