Under dark clouds: Par-EM of the athletes in the Cantian Stadium, August 2008
There are many sports arenas with a past. The Cantian Stadium in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark in Berlin is particularly important in terms of architecture and GDR history. The four-story grandstand is striking. Built in 1986/87 as the most modern grandstand in the GDR and a central building for the 750th anniversary of Berlin. A sports facility that is not even torn down, you would think. You think.
The Jahn sports park, including the stadium, is to be converted into an inclusive sports park, i.e. a handicapped accessible competition site. The Special Olympics 2023, the Olympic Games for people with disabilities, for which Berlin was awarded the contract in November 2018, are to take place there. A fixed idea, nothing more. Because it is currently completely unclear whether these games can even take place as scheduled. The sports calendar is continuously rewritten due to the corona. And not only that: a conversion and new construction of the plant should not be completed until 2025.
A unique area
The intrigue around the area is not new. Since 2013, state politics and district administration have been discussing, assessing and planning. Critics of the demolition plans are by no means against an inclusive sports park on Cantianstrasse, but they are against quick urban planning shots. The »Citizens’ Initiative Jahnsportpark«, for example, demands: »No demolition of the stadium! Instead, renovation and renovation! «Above all, it opposes demolition without a development plan and concept for the entire site. So far, there are neither.
The political issue is now a top priority. In a Senate meeting on May 26, the “exceptional urban political importance” of the Jahn sports park was determined. As a result, »in future the responsibility for drawing up and establishing development plans for this area will no longer lie with the district (Pankow, jW), but should be with the Senate Department for Urban Development and Housing «. This ensures »an overall sports concept, urban planning and traffic,« said the responsible Senator Katrin Lompscher (Die Linke).
The demolition work was originally to begin in autumn, now in spring 2021. The funds for the first construction phase, the demolition of the stadium, which is to be replaced by a new construction, second construction phase with the same capacity of 20,000 spectators in the same place, are in the state budget for 2020 / 21 with around 14 million euros. This was explained by Mikhail Nelken, spokesman for building and living for the Berlin Left in the House of Representatives, at the end of May on his website.
It is questionable whether the wrecking ball will be used in a timely manner. The funds are still blocked “until the sports administration has presented the budget committee of the House of Representatives with an updated concept for the future use of the sports park,” said Nelken. So far there is only one usage concept from 2015. »It is clearly out of date.«
Criticism also comes from the Association of German Architects (BDA) and the Association of German Landscape Architects (BDLA). Together they announced on June 11: “The demolition plans in the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn sports park must be stopped immediately!” According to the architects’ associations, the sports park with the adjoining wall park is one of a kind in Germany, possibly a worldwide, and popular sports combined with a green environment. This ensemble must be carefully renovated and “not brudely redesigned,” emphasized Eike Richter, Berlin’s state chairman of the BDLA. And Julia Dahlhaus, state chairwoman of the BDA, demands from the Senate “to carry out a serious citizen participation taking into account the stadium theme and to have concepts for this place drafted in an open-ended competition process.”
The demolition rhetoric
The Senate Department for Home Affairs and Sports considers the stadium with its main grandstand to be ailing, not capable of renovation, and therefore unwavering in its untidy dismantling. State Secretary Aleksander Dzembritzki, one who apparently appreciates hymnic narratives, is the mouthpiece: »The replacement building (this means demolition and new construction of the Cantian Stadium, jW) can develop into an inclusive lighthouse project with nationwide appeal, «he replied on June 3 to a request from MP Andreas Statzkowski (CDU). In the meantime, according to press reports, the “red-red-green” government alliance has met for a first round of coalitions to vote on the future of the Jahn sports park, with others to follow.
The citizens’ initiative of local residents suspects that the Senate’s demolition rhetoric stems from the need to finally “send a signal” after years of hacking “that something is happening”. One circumstance could reassure the activists: Berlin’s construction projects often get stuck in the planning stage.
