Frankfurt wants a "cultural mile" for opera and theater

Culture - Frankfurt wants a "cultural mile" for opera and theater

For more than two hours on Thursday, Frankfurt's city councillors discussed the new building for the municipal theatres - in the end, they followed the proposal of the city council: the opera house is to be rebuilt at its current location, while the theatre is to be built a few hundred meters away in the banking district. The city council was instructed to negotiate a lease agreement for the site. Head of Cultural Affairs Ina Hartwig (SPD) spoke of a "milestone".

Frankfurt has been discussing the future of the municipal theaters for at least 15 years. The glass double structure on Willy-Brandt-Platz is dilapidated and cannot be saved - this has been clearly demonstrated by various studies since 2017. In 2020, the city councillors decided to demolish it. Opera and theater are to have separate buildings in the future - but the question was where these new buildings should go.

Where to put the new buildings?

The number of options - initially there were five - was reduced over the years. A new building at the Osthafen was soon rejected and the stages were to remain in the city center. Various sites were mentioned as options, such as the open space at Willy-Brandt-Platz, where the Euro sign stands, or a site opposite the Alte Oper.

In November, the city council made a decision: against the long-favored "mirror variant", for a variant of the "cultural mile". This variant had also been discussed in reverse, with the opera house between the bank towers and the theater on the current square. The city councillors endorsed the magistrate's proposal on Thursday.

35 million euros for the site

There is currently a bank on the site. Details are now to be negotiated with the landowners - Hessische Landesbank and Sparkasse. According to a preliminary agreement, the city can lease the approximately 5500 square meter site for 199 years and will pay a one-off fee of 35 million euros plus just under two million annually.

However, this is only a fraction of the costs: at the beginning of this year, an expert commission had already estimated the costs for the two new buildings at between 1.27 and 1.3 billion euros - 350 million euros more than at the time when the debate about the variants began. The land costs would then be added to this.

Start of construction in four years at the earliest

Construction is not expected to start quickly. The bank building cannot be demolished until 2027 at the earliest. Once the sites have been secured, an architectural competition must first be held. The city councillors will still have to deal with the project many times - above all with the question of how it is to be financed.

During the construction work, the theater and opera need interim solutions. The current schedule envisages that the new theater will be built first. After completion, this will serve as an interim venue for the opera until the new building is finished. The master plan also envisages that the stages will have a new storage and logistics center.

Only an interim step

The municipal council's proposal received a broad majority, not only from the ruling coalition, but also from the opposition CDU as well as the AfD and the Left Party. Only the BFF and Ökolinx spoke out against it. The SPD praised the "forward-looking decision", while the Greens spoke of "a really good solution". The CDU reminded the few opponents of the plan: "The renovation option is dead."

However, a final decision has yet to be made. It should be made in 2024, when the leasehold agreement is in place. The approval of the city councillors is also linked to further work orders: The city council must concretize the plans in order to prepare the architectural competition; it must present a financing concept and should also get the state and federal government on board for this; and it must look for locations for the interim quarters and the logistics center.