Even on a clear day, the glorious sounding ‘Campus Victoria’ looks especially like a poorly maintained youth hostel with a sea view. The dilapidated balconies of the former boarding school of the seafaring school are loose. A few years ago the last student from the complex on the Dellewal, just outside of West-Terschelling, left for the new campus.
The three buildings have been empty since 2013. Since then, Eilander and entrepreneur Martin Boekeloo have been in conversation with the municipality to realize 44 starter homes for young islanders at that location. Terschelling has great housing shortage. There are plans for new construction in several places, but due to nitrogen standards, nature reserves and the overburdened power network, many locations fall off or the procedure is huge delay. The buildings on the Dellewal have a residential destination, water and electricity connections are already there.
It is hope that the Council now comes to my mind and listens to the wishes of the islanders
Every centimeter of the island is used by Terschelellingers who do not want to ‘go’. Children of Eilanders sleep in attics, in guesthouses of their employer or leave for Harlingen. That also happens to Gerdien Cupido. After a study time, her daughter returns ‘ashore’ on the island. She falls in love with another Cupido, the son of the Cupidos who run the supermarket in the village of Lies. “No family,” assures Gerdien. Within a year the couple will have their first child.
With the prospect of taking over Supermarket Cupido in the long term, the young couple searches for a house on the island in 2023. Gerdien hears about the plane of Boekeloo around the same time. She registers her daughter for a home and says she wants to invest in ‘Woon Cooperative Victoria’, as Boekeloo calls his foundation in formation. According to him, “at least two hundred islanders” have promised the same thing.
“It’s an A-location,” says Boekeloo. From his own holiday bungalow park he overlooks the ‘Victoria’ site on the Dellewal. “With a strong renovation, young people can live here within two years.”
If the municipality suddenly announced in August 2024 that an ‘international knowledge campus’ from Hogeschool NHL Stenden will be on the site, this is not good at Gerdien Cupido and other islanders. Born Terschellinger Douwe Wiegman calls for a demonstration at the beginning of September. At least a hundred Terschelellingers gather at the town hall. “In the 73 years that I live I had never seen anything like that,” says Wiegman, who works with Boekeloo. Through a citizens’ initiative – they collect eight hundred signatures – islanders try to prevent the sale to investor FB Oranjewoud and NHL Stendend.
Alderman Wonen Danny Ruige says he was surprised by the sudden unrest. According to Ruige, the municipality has investigated from 2017 whether homes could be built on the old campus site, but that turned out not to be profitable. “Then the municipality of NHL Stenden Hogeschool approached,” says Ruige.
Housing vision
A few years earlier, in 2019, the city council in the ‘Housing Vision Terschelling’ also notes that there would be permanent residence on the Oude Campus. In an email in 2017, the municipality informed Boekeloo that it wants to publicize the sale publicly and therefore cannot grant him directly. But it doesn’t come to that public tender.
In 2019, the municipality will be in conversation with NHL Stenden, the Hogeschool behind the Maritime Institute Willem Barentsz, the Zeevaartschool that has been on Terschelling for 150 years. Because the Hogeschool itself has no resources for the purchase, a collaboration is entered into with the Frisian investment company FB Oranjewoud (FBO).
Acting mayor Roel Cazemier states in March that the expansion of higher education is good for the “employment on the island” and fits within the desire of the college to “broaden the island economy.” The student numbers of the nautical school have been back years ago and the new research center focuses on circularity, sustainable tourism and climate adaptation. “Issues that are important for the future of Terschelling,” says Cazemier. The municipality did not investigate whether the school can be realized at another location. The agreements with NHL Stenden were already there, says Cazemier.
The citizens’ initiative and the registered objections are declared inadmissible by Cazemier in October 2024.
Didam judgment
This sale did not like, the preliminary relief judge judges Monday. According to the Didam judgment from 2021, governments must make the choice for a buyer of municipal real estate in accordance with “objective, testable and reasonable criteria” in public. In the judgment, the judge picks up the municipality of Terschelling: “The municipality did not establish these criteria prior to the negotiations with the interested parties in the grounds, but afterwards, in order to justify the intended sale of the plot to FBO.”
She also states that the municipality “in no way explains” why FB Oranjewoud would be the only party and that it is not clear why the municipality has abandoned the Terschelling housing vision that prescribes permanent residence. The judge admits that a public tender must take place in the future sale of Campus Victoria.
Whether the 44 starter homes of the Victoria residential cooperative are not settled with the verdict. The criteria for the public sale are not fixed, the municipality can decide to control something other than homes. “It is hope that the council now comes to the minds and listens to the wishes of the islanders,” says Boekeloo after the statement. He says he will continue with the plans for the Victoria housing association.
For the Cupido family, the possible establishment will be late anyway. Daughter and grandchild now live in Harlingen. Gerdien and her husband are willing to move to the shore herself, so that their grandchild can get a “Terschelling upbringing”.
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