Münchner Wohnen is building 141 furnished flats for trainees on Leibengerstraße in Riem. The 18-square-metre flats are to cost 450 euros including heating per month, as Andreas Mickisch, human resources officer for the City of Munich, said at a celebration for the new building on Tuesday: “450 euros including heating per month, that is sensational, and even a trainee can afford that.”
Two thirds of the dormitory places on Leibengerstraße go to municipal junior staff, while one third is allocated by the Azubiwerk to trainees from other companies. Simone Burger, SPD city councillor and chair of the Azubiwerk München, spoke at the celebration about the planned communal areas: “The laundry café is going on the roof.” According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Azubiwerk already operates more than 300 such flats in two complexes at Innsbrucker Ring in Ramersdorf and at Hanns-Seidel-Platz in Neuperlach. A municipal trainee hostel is also still planned in Freiham.
The project is expensive for the city: Münchner Wohnen calculates total costs of 27.2 million euros, 19.7 million of which come from the municipal budget, with the remainder borne by the municipal housing company itself. Converted to the usable floor area of 3560 square metres, that is a good 7600 euros per square metre. When the city council approved the project three years ago, 35.9 million euros had even been forecast; the CSU criticised at the time that this was “not efficient” and agreed only “because the process is already so far advanced”.
The building, designed by the Munich office Grassinger Emrich Architekten, meets the Efficiency House 40 standard (EH40). Because the site has no connection to the district heating network, the hostel is heated with its own water-to-water heat pump, for which drilling 16 metres deep into the groundwater was necessary. There are also a roof garden, nesting boxes and further species protection measures. “Today we would do it more cheaply,” said Jörg Franzen, chief executive of Münchner Wohnen; the city has now switched its energy standard from EH40 to EH55. Asked why savings were not also made on the standards in the three years since the decision, Franzen explained: “With projects like this you cannot change the tracks every six months. The Europe-wide tender for the general contractor alone, with a whole catalogue of services, takes about a year.” Construction had already begun last year.
In addition to the laundry room on the roof, communal kitchens are planned as social spaces. Franzen also wants to examine whether there is room for a table football or a pool table: “We will have to talk again about whether Münchner Wohnen can sponsor that.”
