The areas beyond Koblenzer Straße – where the new football stadium, two extension buildings of the university and a number of emigrant courtyards have long been located – will be kept free and not built on!

In any case, that was an iron principle for a long time when it came to describing the concept for the careful further development of the city of Mainz.

Like a hand with spread fingers, the development should be limited to five corridors: on the axes towards Mombach, to Finthen, up to Lerchenberg, to Hechtsheim and Ebersheim and to Laubenheim.

Everything in between should remain unsealed as farmland or recreational areas.

The city has moved further and further away from this guideline because the community, which is only 100 square kilometers in size, no longer has that much open space.

Markus Schug

Correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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It is currently intended to create space for a biotech hub with up to 5000 jobs in the immediate vicinity of the university on the fields between the stadium and the Europakreisel.

For which a further 50 hectares of arable land would have to be converted into building land within a good ten years.

Because the principle of "internal before external development" that has been prioritized to date is unlikely to work when it comes to attracting large numbers of international companies from the healthcare industry and renowned research institutes.

With their help, the state capital, which benefited greatly from the success of the vaccine manufacturer Biontech SE in 2020 and 2021, would like to permanently expand its position as a biotechnology location.

Habitat for the hamster

In principle, even those environmental and sustainability groups that have now gone public with their joint criticism of the chosen location have nothing to object to.

The area delimited by Saarstrasse, Koblenzer Strasse and the A 60 is one of “the last remaining large areas used for agriculture” in Mainz: “It is an area where cold air is produced and a corridor for fresh air.

In addition, the European hamster, which is threatened with extinction, has current and potential habitat here," says the statement on the planned biotech site on the outskirts of the city.

This view is shared by the Mombach Environmental Working Group, the Environment and Nature Conservation Union, the Mainz Zero initiative, but also by representatives of the "For Future" movement and the Gonsenheim Farmers' Association.

Soil, groundwater, climate and biodiversity: All of this would be endangered by building on the 50 hectares up to the railway line to Alzey.

In addition, such an approach contradicts the climate protection agreements of the Mainz traffic light alliance.

A further heating up of the city by reducing the areas where cold air is produced and fresh air corridors – even if only by a single percentage point – is unacceptable from the point of view of the environmentalists.

For Alfred Zimmer, one of the affected property owners, "it is no longer appropriate to seal such a large area of ​​the best arable land".

Prices of up to 100 euros per square meter

According to reports, city buyers initially offered around 35 euros per square meter of farmland.

In the meantime, private competitors are said to have raised the price to the 100 euro mark - and the trend is rising rapidly.

According to the critics, large-scale projects in the past also show that the city has not always taken the "nature conservation compensation measures" specified in the development plans very seriously: for example at the 05 Stadium or at the Gutenberg Center.

Meanwhile, the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Rheinhessen has just made it clear that a biotech hub alone is far from enough.

In order to be able to offer small and medium-sized businesses in other sectors room to grow and thrive in the future, two more commercial areas, each around 20 hectares in size, are needed: One of these is also to be realized on Koblenzer Straße, i.e. again on the outskirts of Bretzenheim .

For the other, arable land at the old forester's house between the Lerchenberg and the neighboring community of Ober-Olm are under discussion.