City parking Former DB car park is reopening
Bonn · Bonn city has managed to agree a 6-month operating period with the owners. City-Parkraum GmbH is taking over.
After the surprising closure of the car park on Quantiusstrasse behind Bonn's main train station two months ago, many drivers were in need of help. There are only a few legal parking spaces to be found in this area. Especially as several hundred parking spaces on Nordfeld and along Rabinstrasse had to make way for the "Urban Soul" construction project. Anyone wanting to take family or friends to the station or pick them up had been left in the lurch. But all this will change - GA learned yesterday that the car park will be go back into operation on Wednesday.
According to its managing director Rainer Schneider, City-Parkraum GmbH has initially leased the car park for six months in order to rectify the situation there. "We hope to be able to continue operating the car park until the new parking garages on Rabinstrasse and below Nordfeld are completed," said Schneider. According to the project development company for "Urban Soul", the garage on Rabinstraße and the former railway station car park with access via Maximilianstraße should be operational by the end of 2019. The city of Bonn had advocated leasing the car park to the City-Parkraum. It had also been surprised by the closure and announced its desire to talk to the owner about the situation. Many people were very annoyed by the closure, especially as the pavement and cycle path in Quantiusstraße have been occupied by short-term parkers ever since. The CDU party and Bürger-Bund-Bonn submitted corresponding motions to the city council.
As reported, Deutsche Bahn had sold the car park to the hotel and project developer GBI AG from Erlangen. At the time, in response to GA's question about the reason behind the closure, the company stated that the garage was dilapidated. Clemens Jung of the board of GBI AG now explained: "The city had urgently asked us to exhaust all possibilities to reopen the car park".
On the basis of a new expert’s assessment, it has now become clear that further use of the car park without restriction of operational safety is nevertheless possible. However, the permit was initially issued for six months only. "Our contract with the railways initially stated that the car park would close on the date of transition. We simply were not able to continue as the new owners."
With regards to the plans for the site, Jung explained that a new multi-storey car park with around 150 spaces will definitely be built there. It is currently unclear whether a hotel will also be built.
For Rainer Schneider there is no reason to worry: "The owner has submitted the relevant expert’s assessments, according to which operational safety is guaranteed," he said. In terms of quality, the “lousy” multi-storey car park does not meet the standards of the others operated by City-Parkraum. Around 100 of the previous 136 parking spaces will be available from 6 a.m. to 1.30 a.m. The price per hour should be 2.50 euro as usual.
(Original text: Lisa Inhoffen, Translation: Caroline Payne)
