In the future, Munich's pub gardens will only be open in the summer months, and in winter the bar areas will be used as parking spaces again.
Munich's Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD) announced a corresponding resolution proposal in an interview with Munich TV on Tuesday.
The pub gardens were set up to give restaurateurs an opportunity to earn money.
“That's why we implemented it at short notice,” said Reiter.
In this way, around 8,700 new outdoor spaces were created.
Around 900 restaurants had applied for an extension, for which 1037 parking spaces in the city area had to make way.
Reiter also says that nobody could really assume that there would be a second lockdown.
Therefore, the permit for the pub gardens was extended beyond the winter to March 31.
There, too, the hope was to offer restaurateurs another opportunity to generate sales.
“And we've already had winters in which you could sit outside easily,” said Reiter.
The fact that the pub gardens are empty, but not being dismantled, had led to criticism, including the FDP and the Bavarian Party applied for the spaces to be converted back into parking spaces.
Now the pub gardens are only to be set up in the summer months in the coming year.
“That's the nice thing about trying,” said Reiter.
"If it didn't work, do it differently next time."
The district administration committee is to deal with a draft resolution in March, which provides for the pub gardens to be allowed from April to September.
This should apply not only for 2021, but indefinitely.
SPD Vice Christian Vorländer said: “We definitely want to have the additional open bar areas every summer.
If the exceptional situation caused by the corona has been overcome, however, we do not consider pub gardens to be useful as additional free bar areas in winter. "
CSU boss Manuel Pretzl thinks the proposal is good.
“However, in individual cases in which there are conflicts, there must also be opportunities to revoke the approval.
And we need a concept of how we deal with areas in which the already very scarce parking spaces are becoming even fewer. "
