The last open part of the Rummelsburger Bucht is to be built with the show aquarium water house of the Coral World group.
Photo: nd / Nicolas Šustr
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“There is good reason to believe that we will win the urgent legal proceedings,” said lawyer Karsten Sommer cheerfully to “nd”. This week he submitted the 16-page application for a temporary injunction to the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg on behalf of Naturfreunde Berlin. This means that the implementation of the Ostkreuz development plan is to be suspended until a decision has been made on the standards control procedure that has been running since summer 2020.
Specifically, it is about the planned Coral World show aquarium, for which no building application has yet been submitted. But that could soon be the case. The fast-track procedure means that the court must decide on the urgent application before the responsible Lichtenberg district issues a building permit. The procedure has no influence on the remaining permits that have already been issued.
“With the lawsuit against the Ostkreuz development plan, we as the Bay for All Initiative are taking the last chance to stop the development plan and keep a bay for everyone,” the initiative announced.
The points of attack of the experienced and feared by administrations lawyer Sommer also focus on the controversial aquarium (»nd« reported). There is a so-called fraudulent label because “the development plan specifies a public parking area, while the State of Berlin had previously concluded a contract with the investor in which a large part of the area designated as a public park area with a beer garden terrace and a water garden” is admitted, it says in the “nd” present urgent application.
In addition, the area should be fenced and allowed to be closed when it gets dark. In coordination with the State of Berlin, the investor is allowed to set up “various installations that vividly visualize and explain the topic of ‘water'”. Parts of the green area »may be included in the use of the café«, the »nd« present contract allows.
In the response to the proceedings, which had been ongoing since 2020, the district had asserted that the private law contract was irrelevant to the development plan. Sommer vehemently contradicts this. He also does not accept the district’s claim that the terrace only takes up 13.5 percent of the area of the green area. »If only the terrace and the water basin were to be used as a different use, this would have a share of around 22.5 percent of the public park area shown in the development plan. However, the entire fenced-in area has not yet been taken into account, nor is the entire fully sealed area “, it is formulated in the express application. According to the previous case law of the Higher Administrative Court, a maximum of four percent of the green space is still permitted as buildings of minor importance.
That a climate impact assessment “hardly took place,” said lawyer Sommer to the “nd” in January about the second point of attack in the lawsuit. Because this is mandatory. “It is the last open space on the bay that represents a cold air corridor in the direction of the climatically problematic dense development in Friedrichshain,” said Sommer. In the justification for the development plan adopted in 2019 despite strong civil society protests, “effects on the neighboring quarters would be negated without any conclusive, comprehensible derivation,” says the urgent application.
More than 740 donors bear the costs of the lawsuit. Over 17,000 euros have already been raised for this. “The successful crowdfunding shows once again that many people are still actively opposing the sell-out of the city in Lichtenberg,” says the Bay for All initiative. “The Berlin-wide popular initiative with 35,000 signatures and the many demonstrations should not have been in vain, even if the ruling parties in the House of Representatives and Senate are still clinging to the age-old plans for a built and sold Rummelsburg Bay,” it continues.
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