Real estate entrepreneur and former supermarket owner Aydin Kahraman has been working on his plans for a food hall at the Schalkwijk shopping center in Haarlem for fifteen years now. Even though the city council unanimously agreed to the zoning plan in May 2021; Kahraman again and again encounters obstacles thrown up by the municipality. “Time is really running out now,” says the entrepreneur. “There must be an irreversible environmental permit for the food hall on Floridaplein before the end of the year.”
The development committee of the city council has the file on the agenda this Thursday. Both opposition party VVD and coalition parties PvdA, GroenLinks and D66 want to know from responsible alderman Floor Roduner (PvdA) what is still needed to actually be able to build the food hall.
Tiresome process
Aydin Kahraman calls it a ‘tiring process’: “I really hope that this addition to Haarlem and Schalkwijk will come about. I have informed the city council that there is quite a lot of miscommunication in the process. The alderman believes that the talks can be settled at official level, but I really hope to be able to sit down with him after Thursday.”
“We depend on the wishes and requirements of the municipality. We submitted several designs in collaboration with the supervisor appointed by the municipality. The Advisory Committee on Spatial Quality had to do this over and over again, while the same supervisor also speaks to us on behalf of the aesthetics committee. Isn’t that crazy?”
“The question now is: how badly does the municipality want it?”
Kahraman continues: “We are now at draft version five and the municipality wants to see adjustments to that as well. This method has been running right through the process for ten years now and that is going to hurt. I don’t want to spend fifteen years on this plan just to get busy. I just want to realize this for Schalkwijk. We are talking about a hall of 800 square meters, it is remarkable that it all has to take so long.”
One-man spatter
Kahraman suspects that all developments around the shopping center are causing delays. “I understand the municipality a little bit. After we came up with our first plan, other, larger parties also came up with plans for the shopping centre. That makes it more difficult to fit the food hall in properly. I’m just a one-man spader and then it’s very difficult if expensive processes have to be redone over and over again. We’ve done our homework. The neighborhood is enthusiastic, the city council is unanimous in support of the plan. The question now is: how badly does the municipality want it?”
Aydin is not giving up on his dream yet. “I love Harlem. I grew up in Schalkwijk. I believe in the food hall and in the city. When other investors pulled out years ago, I continued to fight for the neighborhood. It feels unfair. I sold my stores to throw myself into this project. I just want to do my job. All I really need now is an open and transparent conversation with Alderman Roduner.”
Whether that conversation will happen, remains to be seen on Thursday evening. Then the council development committee discusses the questions of entrepreneur Aydin Kahraman.
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What is the food hall?
The food hall must become a covered hall on Floridaplein where you can go for a cup of coffee or something to eat. The catering industry must also be open in the evening. There will also be stalls where you can do your fresh shopping. It concerns a hall of 800 square meters, of which a quarter is intended for the fresh market and three quarters for the catering industry.
What obstacles are still there?
There are three recurring problems. The municipality demands that Aydin Kahraman’s company that wants to realize the food hall (Marketplace Developments, ed.) pays for the costs of purchasing and installing underground rubbish containers. According to Kahraman, it had been agreed that those costs would be for the municipality.
When the food hall is built, a transformer house must also be built for the power supply. According to Marketplace, such a transformer house belongs to the public space and the municipality is therefore responsible for it. The municipality demands that the house must come into the building. That is expensive and is at the expense of the space to be rented out in the food hall. In 2020, Marketplace was told in writing that they would be involved in the plans for designing the public space. According to Kahraman, that did not happen.
The third and final obstacle is design. A supervisor appointed by the municipality monitors whether the requirements and wishes of the municipality are being met. Marketplace made the design in consultation with that supervisor and also received approval from the municipality and supervisor. However, it turned out that it did not meet the requirements of the Advisory Committee on Spatial Quality and the design had to be redone. That is not right and causes great damage, says Kahraman.