Bern: No administrative building at the forester's lodge

Due to the high investment costs, the municipal council of Bern has announced that it will not be concentrating city administration jobs at the Forsthaus site as planned. However, the construction of a new works yard, which combines the "Construction", "Sewerage System" and "Garage" operations of the city's civil engineering department, is necessary.

A year ago, the results of the two-stage project competition for the combined construction of a municipal depot and an administration building with up to 500 workstations were presented. In view of initial cost estimates in the range of CHF 85 to 110 million, the municipal council announced that it would not decide on further project steps until a profitability analysis had been carried out.

"100 million construction is not financially justifiable"

The municipal council has now decided not to construct an office building at the Forsthaus. In view of the investments already planned in sports and leisure facilities and in the school sector, a 100 million euro building is not justifiable in terms of financial policy, it says. In addition, the office building would offer too few improvements compared to the status quo for inter-divisional administrative cooperation.

With the construction of a new depot at the Forsthaus site, however, the three operations "Construction", "Sewer network" and "Garage" of the municipal civil engineering department can be merged. Thanks to synergies, this will result in annual savings of around 0.5 million. According to current estimates, the zoning-compliant building will cost just over 40 million. The next step is to formulate a space allocation plan for the new depot and launch a new project. The municipal council would like to be able to decide on a project planning credit for the city council by the second quarter of 2018.