The Water Tower, hotel-restaurant Prinsenhof, café-restaurant Het Pomphuis and four other city national monuments will be owned by the municipality of Groningen. She will take it over from the Groningen Monument Fund (GMF) for 2.2 million euros.
The GMF thus prevents bankruptcy, says GMF director Aale Dijkstra. According to him, of the 14 monuments that the GMF owns, only Prinsenhof and Het Pomphuis bring in money. The rental of the other buildings is insufficient for the fund to maintain the monuments, let alone expand the number of buildings.
For example, in 2010 the GMF took over the water tower (built in 1907) at the Noorderplantsoen and renovated the building, which subsequently became known as De Bovenkamer van Groningen, which can be rented for parties, receptions, lectures, performances and dinners.
Water tower inaccessible due to broken elevator
“To make the monument easily accessible, we installed an outdoor elevator. Due to a conflict with the elevator supplier, the floor is not easy to reach. That makes it difficult to hold parties there,” says Dijkstra. In fact, the water tower is closed until further notice and is managed by anti-vacancy organization Carex. That doesn’t bring any benefits to the GMF.
The major shareholder (58 percent) of the GMF is the municipality of Groningen. Other shareholders are the Noorderzijlvest water board, the municipality of Veendam, the Libau Foundation, the Groninger Kerken Foundation and the Jan Menze van Diepen Foundation. Monuments of the GMF in the province – such as the synagogue in Nieuweschans, the shipyard in Sappemeer and the Waterschapshuis in Onderdendam – will probably end up in the hands of the other shareholders. According to Dijkstra, the monuments in the province are even more difficult to exploit than those in the city.
Municipal theatre, tea dome and regulator’s house for 1 euro
The municipality of Groningen previously bought the Stadsschouwburg back from the GMF for 1 euro and around November the other city monuments will also belong to the municipality. In addition to the water tower, Prinsenhof and Het Pomphuis, this includes the governor’s house on the Ciboga site, the tea dome in the Sterrebos, the Lopsterveerhuis on the Damsterdiep and Florentin restaurant on the Ciboga site.
The municipality says it will first carry out necessary maintenance on the buildings and then consider how the buildings that are not currently being exploited can be made profitable. How is not yet known.
Difficult monumental real estate, opportunism, increased costs
Dijkstra says that the GMF faced a difficult objective: preserving difficult monumental real estate and making it profitable. “My predecessors have purchased several properties in the past. This was based on a good plan for the Prinsenhof and Het Pomphuis. When RTV Noord left the Prinsenhof, the only plan was to build student rooms in it. Now look at this! I think that the GMF has also regularly acted opportunistically to prevent the demolition or sale of a national monument. And the costs of maintenance have increased enormously.”
Dijkstra has been director of the GMF since 2020, which was founded more than 20 years ago for idealistic reasons because several monuments were deteriorating without an owner or without plans. Dijkstra had the idea to expand the number of GMF buildings so that it, like the Groninger Churches and Groninger Landscape Foundation, would be eligible for more subsidies from the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. It didn’t get that far.
The question is whether the municipality has the financial resources to maintain the national monuments and subsequently generate sufficient rental income from them.