No more beach life in forchheim, but a series of unanswered questions: who will pay for the damage caused by the fire in a restaurant hut?? Has the city acted recklessly from an insurance point of view? When will the sand be extracted and the bastion cleared for new events??
As the FT had reported at the beginning of march, after a promising start in 2017, too much sand had come into the beach gears. Therefore, the event agency dinger and boubaker pulled the emergency brake three weeks ago. The organizer from erlangen reacted to the destroyed infrastructure of the city beach, among other things. Last year, a cold storage house and a taproom burned down.
The fire has left its mark. Not only at the wall, which no one wants to take responsibility for, but also in the minds of the city politicians. This was shown in the city council on thursday. Sebastian korber (FDP) ran out of patience: because of the unclear consequential costs of the kaiserstrand for the city of forchheim, he demanded "a status report – and now!" The FDP councillor recalled that the staircase to the bastion, which cost around 7,700,000 euros, had also only been put in place for the beach organizer from erlangen – an unjustifiable privilege, says sebastian korber.
Mayor uwe kirschstein (SPD) contradicted: the staircase was built in order to "activate the bastion for events and to make it an experience". Moreover, korber’s claim was false that the city beach operators had not paid any fees. Dinger and boubaker are, as far as the fees are concerned, "on a par with the forchheimer keller-wirten" had been.
As far as the fire damage to the wall is concerned, legal counsel till zimmer said: the cause of the fire is still unclear. Therefore with the insurance of the organizer one negotiates. "The hope that it will come to us is crude."
But doesn’t the city have its own insurance for all its properties, asked gunther hammer (CSU). "Not for the bastion", said economic challenger viktor naumann, the initiator of the city beach in forchheim.
"Astonishment" about the fact that the bastion "is not fire-protected" was, not only manfred hummer said. The -city councilor also objected to the attitude of the organizer’s insurance company: "they have to step in." Since the fire started in the taproom, there are only two possibilities: "either it was human error or deliberate", concluded manfred hummer. He fears that the city will be left with high consequential costs.
The construction of the staircase is part of this cost, said hummer: "if there was not the operator, there was not the staircase. This was not independent of each other." Moreover, the organizer had left the bastion in "unspeakable condition". Due to a defective cover foil, the wall may have suffered "enormous damage" had been caused by water seepage; this still needed to be checked. In addition, there is now "tons of sand and fire debris on the bastion". A tourist use is impossible for a long time, criticized hummer.
Year of cleaning up
Mayor kirschstein put the criticism into perspective: the organizer’s three-year contract had not yet expired; therefore, he would be able to occupy the flat areas on the bastion until the end of the year. "The operator is taking advantage of the last year to clean up the place. But we have made our wish that the sand comes away before the summer break."
The idea of reestablishing gastronomy on the bastion met with skepticism: without an elevator or ramp, there would be no accessibility, said sebastian korber. Karl-heinz fleckenstein (CSU) wanted "all the city’s properties" as a priority to find out whether they had fire insurance. And manfred hummer issued the slogan: no more experiments on the bastion!
This in turn provoked an objection from josua flierl (CSU). Calling the kaiserstrand an experiment gives it a "negative echo". Many city councillors who had initially rejected the idea, he had met three times a week on the beach during the summer. Flierl drew a positive conclusion: "the beach has opened up new target groups. I will be happy if there is a successor operator on the bastion". Manfred hummer, on the other hand, questioned the use concept. "There was no way up there." The project was stranded. "In the end, the operator quit because it wasn’t worth it."