Does the ‘Wall of Oranjedorp’ fit into the zoning plan or not? That is the question in the hearing at the objection committee of a number of Oranjedorp residents against the municipality. According to the residents, the municipality has knowingly turned a blind eye to the arrival of a distribution center from investor Solidiam opposite Oranjedorp. Or was it an official accident and the municipality is now left with the lumps?
Solidiam wants to build a distribution center 400 meters long and 14 meters high 80 meters from the ribbon development of the village. According to the municipality, this fits perfectly with the zoning plan. According to the objectors, the explanation of the zoning plan explains why it is not possible. And that may well be what matters in this case for the objection committee of the municipality: the legal status of that explanation.
Several residents of Oranjedorp are not happy with the arrival of the building. The houses on the Oosterwijk all face where the ‘Berlin Wall of Oranjedorp’ is to come, as the building is popularly called.
On the other side of the Oosterwijk is the A37 business park, where the investment company has bought land from the municipality of Emmen. A green zone separates the village from the business park. The distribution center will soon rise about 4 meters above the highest treetops.
The Vos family has been living on the Oosterwijk for forty years and kicked off the hearing with something that can no longer be traced. “I was involved”, Johan Vos begins, “at the time I was involved in village interests and when this farmland became an industrial area, it was promised: it will be a park-like industrial area without high-rise buildings.” This description seems to be reasonably in line with what is written in the explanatory notes to the zoning plan.
According to the objectors, you can read in that explanation what does and does not fit on the business park. Objector Lex Stax: “A plot of approximately 2 hectares, while Solidiam’s plan is five times larger.” According to the municipality’s lawyer, you should see the 2-hectare plot as an ‘impression’. Corine Vink, another objector: “Can I do that too if I’m going to build a house? Show an ‘impression’ while it’s going to get much bigger and higher?”
The size of the plot is one of the many (game) rules that the local residents have found in the explanation. For example, it also states how far you have to build from the property boundary and where you are not allowed to build because there is a gas pipeline. In addition, buildings must be at least 15 meters from the road and a maximum of 70 percent of a plot may be built on. According to the objectors, these are all matters that the municipality and Solidiam have not taken into account at all or in part.
According to the objection of Corine Vink and her husband Patrick Pol, the zoning plan states that the distribution center must be located at least 100 meters from the homes, which is now 80 meters.
But according to both lawyer Zoer of the municipality and Solidiam project leader Dave van der Heijden, the explanation of the zoning plan is not decisive because it would have no legal status. “If that explanation has no legal value and does not matter, why do you, as a municipality, have something like this made?” Objector Corine Vink wonders aloud during the hearing. “That explanation is a very urban plan with dimensions.”
According to objector Stax, the municipality simply has to test whether it fits and the municipality has either done so insufficiently or ‘sold too enthusiastically the land that has been lying fallow for twenty years’. This review should have taken place before the permit was issued to Solidiam. The same applies to water management and nitrogen. According to Vink and Pol, the current wadi ponds are too small to collect all the rainwater from such a large building. Solidiam project leader Van der Heijden argues that the building’s water drainage is well organised.
Vink: “It’s strange that we have to sit here. There are rules of the game. The municipality has read the management regulation to its own advantage without taking into account local residents and archaeological values.”
Lawyer Zoer of the municipality showed an image in which the 14 meter high and 400 meter long building almost completely disappears behind the trees of the Oosterwijk. She had edited an image of Lex Stax for it. In Stax’s version, he looks out from his living room at a wall higher than he can see. Zoer had made the wall much smaller, so that the building disappears behind the trees on the other side of the Oosterwijk.
That earned her scorn from all the objectors. And then the inevitable discussion about how high the trees really are. Solidiam itself also had one artist impression brought. The building can be seen better on this, but still largely does not protrude above the trees, something that the residents believe will certainly be the case. “And in the winter the trees are bare, so you’re looking at a long gray wall anyway,” adds Marin Vos.
See below an animation by RTV Drenthe and the animation by Solidiam.