Boat locker may not be 40 cm larger by Heritage Flanders

Incomprehensible, says the shipowner, and the city also thinks it’s a shame, but has to accept it.

Jos Michielsens, Shipping Company ‘Venice of the North’: “The toilet downstairs in our service area is even more spacious than this cubicle. Even more comfortable.” And so Jos wants to install a new counter that is barely forty centimeters wider than what is now there. So that there is at least room for a laptop. “Then I could send emails and do the invoicing at dead moments, so that I no longer have to do that at home in the evening. An extra forty centimeters. That’s what I’m asking for.”

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“Tables for catering are possible”

The Bruges fire brigade gave positive advice. But the Immovable Heritage Agency gave a negative advice and that is binding. Jos wonders whether they came to look at the scene. “Everywhere in the city there are tables and chairs on the sidewalks for the catering industry. That is possible. But adding fourty centimeters in a blind corner is not possible. I am disappointed.

Franky Demon, councilor for spatial planning in Bruges: “If the city council itself had been able to make completely autonomous decisions, I think we would have allowed this in the right place. But the rules are there for everyone and we must follow them.”

The alderman does plan to raise this again with Heritage.