A building community has bitten on granite with its plan to combine family-friendly and barrier-free living and working in a large studio building in Murnau.
The planned location turned out to be a catch in the multi-million dollar project: Achrain, near a waste disposal company.
Murnau
- The project and concept met with the sympathy of speakers from various parliamentary groups - but that did not help the “Atelierhaus im Blauen Land” building association. The friendly words were all accompanied by a very big but. In the end there was a clear no. The Murnau building committee unanimously rejected the community's initiative - as an opinion to the municipal council. She wanted to build apartments, a coworking office, a small village shop, studios for temporary living and working and a kindergarten as a parents' initiative in Achrain, which is known as a commercial area. Marc Heitmeier names the investment sum - the architect and project manager himself plans to move in with his family and office - nine to eleven million euros.The interest in the project was obviously enormous: Heitmeier speaks of "over 700 inquiries". After ten partners had come together, they first pressed "the pause button". The proposed location in the south of a garbage disposal company did not seem to be a deterrent at all.
Achrain commercial area: Building community reserves space for one year
In the eyes of the members of the administration and the building committee, the complex on around 900 square meters of floor space, which should contain, among other things, twelve family-friendly apartments plus five barrier-free apartment buildings, and the companies located there are mutually exclusive.
The municipal councils refused the proposed change to the Achrain development plan in eight points - among other things, an area was to be designated as a general residential area - which would have been necessary to implement the project south of the waste disposal company.
In December 2020, the 2800 square meter space was reserved for a year by a private owner, says Heitmeier.
"We have been developing the concept since then."
Nice concept - but nobody can get used to the location
Mehr-Bewegen parliamentary group spokesman Phillip Zoepf found this “basically very good”, Stefan Lechner (ÖDP / Bürgerforum) it was “very likeable”, and Veronika Jones (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) stated that it included “everything we actually have want".
But as mentioned: The big but came with all of them.
Zoepf also expressed his personal astonishment at the chosen location: "I can't understand why you want to live down there next to the waste disposal company."
Construction management sees a conflict of use
Market architect Klaus Tworek called the operation with large areas of ownership "systemically relevant" for Murnau. There is "a major conflict of use". The very near-natural residential project "clearly collides with the company's main focus of use" - which is not the only one in Achrain where there could be problems with immission control. Another fear: A general residential area in an area characterized as a commercial area may call for imitators, especially since the land prices - currently 120 euros per square meter are set according to the standard land value map - are likely to rise massively. Tworek expressed concern that the character of the area could change significantly. Companies would possibly be displaced and a kind of splinter settlement emerged, it said.
Lots of living space in the commercial area - that could attract imitators
Rudolf Utzschneider (CSU) saw - like Zoepf - "the clear danger that we only cause conflicts".
Lechner emphasized that if you allow a lot of living space in the industrial park, everyone comes up with the idea of buying a plot of land very cheaply.
Jones declined the request on the grounds of the location and the issue of land consumption.
The project is to be continued in a modified form with more business
Heitmeier refers to a “tenement house” between the disposal company and the reserved ground: “We can't really understand where there are conflicts of use.” He thinks the rejection is “a shame, we were very bent”. The project manager, who has been planning for building cooperatives for twelve years, still wants to work and live in Achrain. “We definitely want to continue the project” - albeit in a different, smaller form, in line with the development plan, as he asserts: “The focus will be on commercial use”, in the form of offices. In addition, there would be “only four apartments”. A part of the building community is sticking to the previous plans. However, they are no longer to be realized in Murnau-Achrain, but in Weilheim.
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