The initiators of a residential court in Stadskanaal for mainly the elderly are irritated by the slow progress from the municipality. They have been waiting for progress for years.
“There were enthusiastic discussions in the first years,” said Roelof Plieger on Monday evening as a speaker in the Stadskanaal municipal council. That enthusiasm was in 2020. The initiative from residents was developed at full speed as a kind of Knarrenhof – and also supported by the Knarrenhof foundation. But the initiators are running into walls at the municipality, says Plieger.
Because after three years there is still no progress. While in recent years the municipality kept telling the truth that there would be more clarity ‘very soon’.
This would mainly concern the sale of the dreamed land. It is located opposite the Stadskanaal library, where the Gabriël Dam School used to be. The initiators have already indicated in 2021 that they would like to buy it, but the law does not allow this to be done privately, the municipality says.
‘Interested people drop out’
Fine, says Plieger, but he wants the residents’ initiative to be able to make a bid for it. And that just doesn’t happen. In the meantime, construction costs are rising and the club is seeing some of the 180 interested parties dropping out to projects in local municipalities across the provincial border to Drenthe and other places in the country. “They won’t come back,” Plieger predicts.
In response to Plieger’s concerns, Alderman Egbert Hofstra (PvdA) promised that bids on the land will be possible in the first months of 2024.