For weeks, the Department of Education and the European Central Bank kept the feasibility study for the controversial new building of the European School on Frankfurt's Festplatz a secret.

The paper was only presented to a hand-picked circle - the allotment garden association Riederwald 1913, for example, which is affected by the construction of the school and is to lose a small part of its gardens next to the fairground.

The result of the study then leaked out: The European School only fits on the fairground if 44 gardens on the neighboring property are replaced.

Rainer Schulz

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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On Monday evening, the study was finally presented to the education committee of the city council and thus became public.

Martin Wentz, urban planner and author of the study, justifies the overbuilding of the allotments: That is also justifiable because the association has four facilities.

Only one of them will be needed in part, replacements have already been found for 21 of the 44 gardens that are no longer available, and the same should happen for the rest.

"It's not about the original substance of the club," says Wentz.

Important for recruitment

The planner asks for an understanding of the special needs and the spatial dimension of the European School, which will be designed for around 2300 pupils and 400 teachers and employees.

"It is completely different from what we know from other schools." The previous area in Niederursel is too small to accommodate the growing number of students.

In the course of the settlement of the European Central Bank, the city of Frankfurt had contractually committed to providing the school with an appropriate piece of land.

"The school is an essential building block for recruiting new employees," says Wentz.

A search for other properties did not lead to a satisfactory result.

There is aircraft noise at the Kaiserlei, and there was no consensus in the magistrate on the Mainwasen.

The fairground remained.

Wentz also has to put up with many critical questions in the committee, not only from the allotment gardeners, but also from the city councillors.

For example, Wentz cannot explain why the school not only consists of a primary school and a secondary school, but also includes a daycare center with 250 places, even though the European Central Bank also operates daycare centers at other locations in Frankfurt.

That's part of the school's pedagogical concept, he says, and as a planner it's not his job to question this concept.

Low reserve

Wentz makes it clear that the school's space requirements at the fairground will be met, but only just so: "We are a tick bigger." There is hardly any reserve worth mentioning.

Only 3800 square meters are available for an extension.

This area should initially be used as a school garden, where the school can work together with the allotment garden association: "It is also an asset and not just takes something away."

The planner explains that the crux of the matter is the traffic development: the previous access road to the fairground at the Ratsweg/Bornheimer Hang intersection is not sufficient for an estimated 1000 cars that drive to the school in the morning.

It is imperative to build a new road on the northern edge of the fairground, which leads from the Bornheimer Hang to the road at Riederbruch and allows the site to be circled once.

Parking spaces in underground car park

To ensure that the ice rink and the panorama pool can still be reached, 120 parking spaces in the underground car park must be available to visitors.

Committee members doubt that these spaces are sufficient and inquired whether the underground car park could also be built on two levels.

"It's possible if you have the money for it," replies Wentz.

The city of Frankfurt does not have to pay for the costs of the school.

The federal government will bear the construction costs, which are estimated at around 150 million euros.

In addition, the “parent taxis” should disappear underground.

The city councilors in the education committee do not want to give up the allotment gardens entirely.

Sara Steinhardt, education policy spokeswoman for the CDU parliamentary group, thinks that the school's "area plan" can still be optimized in order to save space.

She suggests locating the day-care centers elsewhere.

staggered in height

In response to criticism that the school buildings were too flat and did not use the land efficiently, Wentz replied that schools with more than four floors were not built in an emergency.

The height of the building is staggered according to age-appropriate needs: the day care center has two floors, the gymnasium has six, with two halls stacked on top of each other.

Education department head Sylvia Weber (SPD) now wants to investigate how many parking spaces are actually necessary.

In addition, the 18 points that were decided within the framework of the "cooperation agreement" between the city, the federal government, the ECB and the European School are to be worked through.

Weber justifies the fact that this agreement was signed on November 3rd, although many questions are still unanswered, with the time pressure: Frankfurt has also applied for the seat of the European anti-money laundering authority.

So it is well received when the European School takes a step forward.