There are quite a few municipalities in Germany in which there is talk of a pool crisis or pool dying.

There can be no question of that in Frankfurt.

After the contracts for the rebuilding of the Rebstockbad were signed in March, the second new swimming pool planned by the BäderBetriebe Frankfurt has now been launched.

Work on the Bornheim family pool officially began on Friday with the groundbreaking ceremony.

In two years time, right next to the ice rink, the first new swimming pool in Frankfurt since the Rebstockbad was opened in 1982 is to replace the panorama pool just a few hundred meters away.

The city will sell the property of the baths, which opened in the 1960s, for residential development.

Daniel Meuren

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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“Other cities are really doing sports,” said City Councilor Markus Frank (CDU) at one of his last appointments as head of the sports department, before transferring responsibility for the sports facilities to his fellow magistrate Mike after the election of the new city council on Wednesday and the planned redesign of the departments Josef (SPD) is handed over.

“In Frankfurt, on the other hand, we invest in sport.

In the past ten years we have taken 100 million euros into our hands and renovated and modernized almost all bathrooms. "

Baths companies are hoping for 1000 visitors a day

This does not currently exist in this form in all of Germany, said Boris Zielinski, managing director of the BäderBetriebe. When the groundbreaking for the new building is set at Rebstockbad after dismantling and demolition work in 2023, the family pool should already delight the first visitors - with 900 square meters of water and many family and child-friendly offers from a slide landscape to climbing elements to a sauna landscape. The bathing companies are hoping for 1000 visitors a day and thus an increase of at least 20 percent compared to the numbers in the panorama pool.

According to Frank's ideas, the neighborhood of the ice rink could also contribute to this. “It couldn't be more family-friendly. One part of the family can ice-skate or go to an ice hockey game, the others go swimming or warm themselves in the sauna. ”But there should also be economic synergies: The waste heat from the preparation of the ice surface should be used to preheat the bathing water in turn, ice can be used in the neighboring hall. Frank emphasized that this was not a pure "environmental gesture", but also had monetary advantages - such as the energy efficiency of the entire new building. The costs for bathrooms are not primarily defined by the construction, but primarily by operation and service life, says Frank. That's why the city took great careto select a partner experienced in pool construction with the Stuttgart office 4a Architekten.

In the meantime, however, it is certain that cost increases of a good ten to 15 percent compared to the budget approach approved by the city council have to be taken into account. According to Frank Junker, managing director of the municipal housing company ABG, the price development for building materials from sand to steel and wood to the cost explosion for sanitary facilities is not leaving the project untouched. However, he also emphasized that the costs “do not threaten to get out of hand” due to concluded contracts. As managing director of the Bäderbau GmbH, which was founded specifically for the construction of the family pool, Junker is responsible for the project.