What is more economical: a renovation or a new building?
The Fraunberg municipal council faced this question at its meeting on Tuesday evening.
Fraunberg - Because the southern wing of the St. Florian children's home, which is currently getting a new northern counterpart (we reported several times), is structurally dilapidated.
For this reason, the community had the Hajek engineering office from Gars am Inn draw up an economic feasibility study for both alternatives - after detailed consultation, the committee decided on a new building.
"Anyone who examines a building like this one from 1950 and other changes from 1985 is now guaranteed to find contaminated sites, such as asbestos," explained Stefan Hajek to the councillors.
“We checked all the relevant trades and found that it wasn't just the floors and masonry that were deficient.
In order to keep children here, the heating and electrics would have to be renewed in any case.”
At the moment, three different groups for crèches and kindergartens are housed in two old, ground-level group rooms and in the basement ("mole group") in the building wing that adjoins the former municipal office.
In the event of a refurbishment, the children would have to move into container rooms, as they have been set up behind the building in question for a long time.
For this solution alone, the engineering office has estimated around 240,000 euros during the conversion period, for the renovation of the wing the estimate is between 850,000 and 900,000 euros.
When examining the costs for a complete demolition of this part of the building including the municipal office, the experts estimate around 1.4 million euros including the new building.
"This solution would have several advantages," said Hajek: "Since we want to build this new building further south than the previous wing, we would also gain more space for the shared garden in the open area between the wings.
The children could stay in their previous rooms until the new building is completed.”
On the other hand, Hajek calculated that a refurbishment “would eat up around 97 percent of the costs of a new building”.
Confronted with these numbers and the statement by Mayor Hans Wiesmaier, "that the project cannot be postponed, also because of possible subsidies", the municipal council unanimously decided in favor of a new building solution.
The head of the town hall emphasized that this is "not an extension of the children's home, but an upgrading of the old stock".
Since the committee also approved the demolition of the old teacher's house on Schulstraße at the same time, a later extension of the children's house to the south is quite conceivable if necessary.