Dispute over the old railway headquarters in Frankfurt: Bafin instead of vocational school

The Frankfurt education department failed in its attempt to rent the old railway headquarters in the Gallusviertel for the Berta Jourdan vocational school. After a three-year wait during which the city government failed to reach agreement on the project, the owner has now ended the impasse. He has found another tenant: Bafin employees will oversee the financial market from there.

Now the factions involved in the decision-making are blaming each other. The SPD regrets that the parliamentary groups did not come to an agreement. The CDU feels “faced with a fait accompli,” and the Greens and Volt justify why they did not agree to the project because of doubts about its economic viability.

The truth is that they were not alone in their concerns. The audit office, the treasury and the legal office also spoke out against renting the property. Among other things, there were legal concerns about the rental agreement, which consisted of 55 pages, including appendices even 300. The agreement was unbalanced to the city's detriment, it was said, and had unclear regulations. The Department of Education has failed to address these legal concerns.

More than a million euros, for 30 years

And the economic viability was also in question. The inspection authorities complained that the property did not fit the school's requirements. The ratio of rental space to actually usable space is unfavorable. The question therefore arises as to why the city even wants to rent the building for such a low price. More than a million euros would have been due every month for 30 years.

Such concerns cannot simply be dismissed. It is understandable that the Greens and Volt did not ignore this criticism and refused to give their consent. They criticize the fact that Sylvia Weber (SPD), head of the education department, only focused on one building and did not look for an alternative to the vocational school. There certainly would be: The Postbank building in Eckenheim belongs to the city and does not yet have a user. Weber wants to accommodate a comprehensive school that has yet to be founded there. But it seems more urgent to first find relief for the Berta Jourdan School, which is suffering from a lack of space.

It's sad for the Berta Jourdan School that it's now going back to zero and the search is starting all over again. This could have been solved differently if the end had been drawn earlier on a project that was not capable of gaining a political majority due to concerns within the administration.