Sports development plan for Bonn Expert appointed to review Bonn’s sport facilities
Bonn · After years of discussion, the city has started a 190,000 Euro project to review its sports facilities and come up with a development plan for the next 20 years. Facilities at Sportpark Nord and Pennenfeld need “urgent” renovation.
The City council and administration have long talked about it and now the city has appointed an expert to produce a sports development plan on the future of the largely dilapidated outdoor facilities and sports halls. The Euro 190,000 contract was awarded to the sports scientist Robin Kähler and should result in concrete recommendations within two years.
The expert and his team are to conduct a survey of the 100 city sports halls and 52 outdoor facilities, review the requirements of club, hobby, company and school athletes and project an outlook for the next 20 years.
“We want to discuss with citizens how we can distinguish Bonn as a sport city, despite the well-known financial situation,” emphasized Martin Schumacher, the councillor for culture and sport. There will be opportunities for citizen participation in the process. The expert has no requirement to look for savings or closing down opportunities.
This is important to the city sport association Stadtsportbund Bonn (SBB), in which the 80,000 athletes from 380 clubs are organized. “The important thing in this long overdue project is to analyse the actual requirements,” said SSB director Bernd Seibert. He sees the sport development plan as a long-term process. Sports clubs could take over the running and upkeep of city sports facilities so the council saves money. However, the SSB has put a pilot project for three facilities on ice because the city administration was not able to give concrete information about running costs, energy use and renovation requirements.
Robin Kähler should now determine all this data for a sports facilities register. However, renovation decisions will not only be made on the basis of structural aspects. One criterion will also be the social importance of, for example, a particular sports hall to a district.
The city wants to invest 9.7 million Euros in sports facilities in this year alone. Four new artificial grass pitches are planned and two others, under construction since 2016, are to be completed. The Sportpark Nord and the facilities at Pennenfeld must be “urgently” modernized according to the Sport Office. There is also a considerable need for refurbishment of older flood-lit facilities. The city wants to revamp the baseball facility in the Rheinaue as the European Baseball Championships will be held there in 2018.
(Original text: Andreas Baumann. Translated by Kate Carey.)
