Retailers are putting pressure on openings with their own concept.
He desperately needs it: The deforestation in Bavarian city centers can only be limited, no longer prevented.
Munich / Weilheim - Historic houses, colorful, well-tended facades - there is a reason why Weilheim is a figurehead for the entire Free State if you want to show how inner cities could work.
But now bigger and bigger cracks are showing in the idyllic picture.
Many long-established companies will not survive the corona lockdown *.
Café Krönner in the center of Weilheim was an institution since 1868. It survived two world wars.
But now it's over.
Two houses down a bakery - closed forever.
Right next to it the Hapfelmeier sports shop - abandoned.
A total of eight Weilheim inner-city commercial buildings are empty.
Lockdown in Bavaria: Germany's oldest department store is also critical
A business that wants to stay is also affected.
The Weilheim department store Rid has a special status to defend: that of the oldest German department store.
This, too, loses its attractiveness with every new gap in the neighborhood.
"It's not five to twelve, it's twelve," said managing director Florian Lipp when he and 27 other inner-city associations pleaded for openings for Weilheim, Bavaria's Minister of Economic Affairs, Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters).
Including such well-known gems as Bad Tölz, Penzberg or Garmisch-Partenkirchen - each a tourist magnet in itself.
But there are also others who saw each other at the very beginning.
For example the post-war refugee settlement Geretsried.
“In recent years, we have created a city center for the first time in our history,” says Ludwig Schmid, chairman of the city center association there.
"And now there is no more life there."
"The long-term consequences are fatal," says Thomas Grasegger, who runs a traditional costume store in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
He speaks of an 80 percent loss of sales and refers to the supply chains through which this slump eats its way through Bavaria and neighboring countries.
He calls the weaving mill in the Upper Palatinate, the sewing mills in the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries - all deeply in the red.
“We will soon no longer have a European clothing manufacturer,” he fears.
End of lockdown required: retailers suggest "opening matrix" - it is also about capacity utilization
It's not just trade that is suffering.
Nina Hugendubel, the chairwoman of City Partner Munich, may well reopen her traditional Munich bookstore.
But what good is all of this if you only find wasteland in the area.
"At least the outdoor catering should be able to open", says Wolfgang Fischer, the managing director of City Partner Munich.
That is also safer with hygiene concepts, "than when hundreds of people with coffee-to-go cups are standing close together at Gärtnerplatz".
On Wednesday, retailers presented an "opening matrix" which not only depends on the incidence and thus the positive test results, but also on the burden on the health system with people who are actually sick.
The dealers rely on a step-by-step plan from the Robert Koch Institute *.
Under an incidence of 35, all shops are allowed to open.
But also for incidences up to 50 - if the occupancy of the regional intensive care beds with Covid patients is not more than 12 percent.
or even up to 100 if the intensive care bed utilization does not exceed five percent.
In addition, there are gradually stronger restrictions up to the restriction to shops for daily needs:
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The trade has presented an "opening matrix", which depends on the incidence and the burden on the health system with people who are actually sick.
© FKN
Corona easing in Bavaria?
Aiwanger worries about “cultural assets” - and draws a bat scenario
At Aiwanger, who achieved national recognition in 2019 with a legendary speech, the sales representatives ran open doors.
“Trade has never been a hotspot,” said the Minister for Economic Affairs.
"Now we are breaking what we have to build up again later with billions." There are milder means than the closure.
However, Aiwanger also gave the dealers little hope that they could recover the damage they had already suffered.
In his opinion, additional shopping Sundays would fail because of the churches, the trade unions and, last but not least, the courts.
An extension of the opening times until late in the evening gives better chances.
However, it is questionable what the smaller Bavarian government partner can enforce with the stronger lockdown faction *.
Aiwanger relies on catchy formulas: “You have to see the city center as a cultural asset,” he says.
And as a deterrent: "Broken shop windows in which bats live, like in the Ruhr area, are not our objective."
* Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
