Amid soaring costs, Munich pulls back on new concert hall
mainHaving given the go-ahead to a new concert hall in Munich, the state of Bavaria is now having second thoughts after seeing the costs shoot through the roof.
The Gärtnerplatztheater reopened two weeks ago after extensive renovation. The work, scheduled to take three years, lasted seven.
And the cost, signed off at 70.7 million Euros, has now turned out to be 121.6 million Euros.
The funding authorities are furious.
One minute you’re lamenting the fact that our politicians show little or no interest in the genre, the next you’re sneering at George Osborne: “the Wagner-loving former chancellor, is puffing the project through the op-ed pages of his freesheet newspaper.”
Why do I get the impression that you are miffed because the City of London might ignore your advice and actually build it?
Read the argument and respond to the facts.
My only error is posting in the wrong place. So far as facts are concerned, there are few solid ones at this stage. And I’m not sure what a photograph of the old museum adds to the argument, other than to add to the general feeling of negativism.
The whole tone of the piece is ill-judged, IMO.
the picture does show the mentioned theatre.
apart from that, I agree: this post does not help to clarify the facts about the concert hall.
Sorry, I’ve confused everything by posting in the wrong place. My comment refers to the article on the LSO’s new concert hall, not Munich.
As it happens, I think both should go ahead.
Too early in the day to be on the computer, obviously!
this headline is unnecessarily confusing:
yes, on the one hand the renovation of the theatre has indeed gone over budget.
however, about the proposed new concert hall (a completely unrelated project) no one has “pulled back”:
the Bavarian state government is committed to its funding, has just started to look for an architect and the minister for culture praises the project as world class – no “second thoughts” in sight.
the linked article only states that the building and planning authority is revising its internal structures in order to help avoid similar overspending in future projects.
no one seems to be “furious”, either.
on the contrary: the Bavarian government is quite happy to finance a new concert hall in Nuremberg as well as a large portion of the Augsburg theatre.
additionally, in Munich the city is about to spend hundreds of millions of euros to renovate the Gasteig complex with the Philharmonie.
I can’t really understand why concert halls HAVE TO be so expensive. A Lidl-Halle can sound great with proper acoustic design and treatment. It can be built 100x faster with 1/100th of the cost. There are even highly reputable music festivals held in renovated factories.
If BR and Jansons really want to be pioneers, they should work out some NEW solutions.