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Three leisure facilities in Erfurt are about to end | New Articles

Three leisure facilities in Erfurt are facing the end

Erfurt.
The climbing hall, kart center and trampoline park have only one thing without income: fear. We visited them.

Tina Knaute is the manager of the Erfurt trampoline park.

Photo: Michael Keller

When it comes to the so-called soft location factors in terms of attractiveness of a city as a business location, leisure activities also have a permanent place in the catalog. Three from the “particularly attractive” category had settled in Erfurt in recent years. Now, because of the Corona standstill, they may be facing an imminent end. We are talking about the “leisure triangle” in the north of the city in the street An der Lache – the climbing hall “Nordwand”, the kart center right next to it and the trampoline park MyJump. All current developments in the free Corona live blog.

Fikret Abramow invested 400,000 euros in the Erfurt Kart Center in 2017

Fikret Abramov gives a pained smile. In June 2017, the 53-year-old moved his karting center from Erfurt-Ost to the old industrial hall at An der Lache. At that time he invested 400,000 euros, including the purchase of 40 new karts. The success proved his entrepreneurial decision to expand. “It went really well, the shop was always full,” says Abramov. Now he estimates his chance of survival “maybe ten percent”. No more income since, a six-figure loan depresses, he has to pay 10,000 euros monthly rent. Plus additional costs such as heating, electricity, insurance, telephone, internet. He has sent seven of his eight employees on short-time work. 17,000 euros have flowed in aid. “That’s actually nothing,” says the kart track owner.


November and December are otherwise the months with the highest sales, with Christmas parties and private parties. He repaid the prepayment in full. And another EUR 20,000 loan was taken out in September. It was three months behind him when some more money came into the cash register. “That saved me for a while, but that’s only enough for a little while,” he says, depressed. He doesn’t get another loan. One now lives on the service of his wife. If he is allowed to reopen in April, the main season is actually over for him. “I cried, I caught a depression, I can no longer sleep properly, constantly brooding over what to do in the future,” says Abramov. He does not know. With this experience on his back, he would never go into business for himself again, he swears. Those who refer to Hartz IV are now better off than him. His last hope: the vaccinations for everyone. “I am very confident. It won’t work any other way, otherwise everything will break down, ”he says. And adds: “Everything should have been rigorously shut down in November”.

It’s Andreas Strobel’s birthday. No reason to celebrate this year. In two ways. The bans on encounters on the one hand and the fear of existence on the other hand are no indicators of a party. In 2014 Strobel opened his climbing hall. It started out “bumpy” before it started slowly uphill. With the last two years he was “quite satisfied” until the pandemic in March 2020. The calendar was well filled with company events, private parties, kindergarten and other events for young people. And then that. Lockdown. Everything tight.

The loans are far from being paid off

The 43-year-old has invested almost one million euros. The loans are far from being paid off. He used to have up to 25 employees. Today he and his partner Philip Bogatzewski are still left. The two of them use the forced closure with a few undaunted like-minded climbing freaks to make structural improvements to the hall. Which suggests a certain amount of optimism that it can somehow go on.

But even at Strobel the costs continue to run mercilessly. 5000 euros hall rent, plus the ancillary costs. To make matters worse, he had to throw away goods last week – ice cream, frozen foods, drinks – because they had expired. Another couple of thousand wet ones. Incidentally, the same thing happened to his neighbor Abramov.

Regular customers buy a voucher from time to time as a sign of solidarity

“If the promised financial aid from November and December does not come soon, we will make it until March at the most. Then it’s over. Bankruptcy, ”he says. The father of two young daughters can sleep a maximum of four hours, then he is overcome by brooding. Fortunately his wife has an income and there is something else on the high edge. And there are regular customers who would occasionally buy a voucher as a sign of solidarity. Little consolation. But a sign.

Tina Knaute is the manager of the trampoline park around the corner. MyJump has been a hit since it started in October 2017. Always full. Now yawning emptiness in the colorful lockers. None of the 18 employees are on site – short-time work. The short good phase in summer when it was allowed to open – history. The 32-year-old says that there wasn’t much of the easing. What that means economically for MyJump in Erfurt, whether the continuation is endangered because of running costs with zero income, MyJump boss Britta Lorenz in Berlin has so far been persistently silent. It is “temporarily closed” at all six locations of your company in Germany. There is still hope.

For Erfurt, the corona-related loss of the three leisure facilities would be a major loss. Not just because of the soft location factors.

Ministry: Around 10,500 Thuringians vaccinated against Corona

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