By Gunnar Schupelius
A future for the famous building has been sought for 13 years and eight months. But none is found because the Senate has no plan and rejects the involvement of private developers, says Gunnar Schupelius.
Berlin’s largest ruin is at the Platz der Luftbrücke. It is Tempelhof Airport. Around two billion euros are needed to refurbish the buildings. The red-green-red coalition releases only 50 million euros per year. That way it would take 40 years to complete the work. That is no solution.
If the public sector lacks the necessary money, it has to look for partners. The FDP MP Sibylle Meister proposed giving the airport building to private project developers by leasehold for 99 years. Maybe that would be one way, maybe another would be better. SPD, Greens and Left reject the participation of private investors. Be that as it may, but in return they would have to present their own ideas and they don’t have them.
That’s why nothing is happening and has been for 13 years and eight months.
The airport closed on October 30, 2008. Three years later, the Wowereit Senate founded the company “Tempelhof Projekt GmbH”, which was to develop the airport building for a new use. This company has not succeeded to this day. On their homepage you always read the same phrases: “In the coming years, Tempelhof Airport will be developed into a place of experimentation and a new urban quarter for art, culture and creative industries…”
That can mean everything and nothing, so far it has remained with the beautiful words.
The “Tempelhof-Project-GmbH” has developed into a kind of employment company that, with 80 employees, devours a good ten million euros in personnel costs per year. The vacancy in the airport building costs taxpayers an additional 18.2 million euros per year, which is the equivalent of 50,000 euros every single day.
The airport building has around 205,000 square meters of gross floor space that could be rented out, but only two-thirds are rented out to around 76 companies and associations. They are all fillers and reside in dilapidated rooms, such as the police headquarters as the largest tenant.
There is no plan behind the rental. If you want, you can move in and move out again. The Senate created the “Development Concept 2030+” for the airport building. But if you look in there, you lose all hope. There you will find sentences like this: “The Tempelhof airport building carries the experiment in its heart (…), it should embrace, be colourful, allow.”
It’s hard to know what to vote for here every five years when governments can’t even save a former airport building and convert it to a new use.
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