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The approximately 10-hectare area northeast of the Bässlergut deportation prison is designated as an industrial area and is currently used mainly for agriculture. That should change, as Basel-Stadt real estate agency and Weil am Rhein city authorities announced at a press conference on Tuesday.
The goal is to create a mixed-use neighborhood for 1,500 to 2,200 residents. Because the area is owned by the municipality of Basel, but is on German territory, Weil am Rhein and Basel-Stadt jointly took responsibility for the problem in 2018. Because on the Rhine, sovereign tasks, such as drawing up a plan of territorial ordering, they are incumbent, while Basel can assign the area to investors or direct users.
Two different proposals
In a concrete first step, Immobilien Basel-Stadt 2020 signed an urban planning study contract and financed it with half a million francs. The results are now available: The proposals of Hosoya Schaefer Architects (Zurich) with Agence Ter.de Landscape Architects (Karlsruhe) and Pool Architects (Zurich) with Maurus Schifferli Landscape Architects of Bern were selected.
They form a “high-quality foundation” for further planning and should not be understood as final planning, as Weil’s first mayor Christoph Huber explained. There are two surprisingly different proposals.
Construction may not start for 15 years
The first proposal envisages a loose development in eight blocks, which are aligned with the Wiese Landscape Park and the long alders in the south and east of the area. In the west, commercial buildings should form a barrier to the busy Freiburgerstrasse and the railway line. The second proposal envisages a development of divided perimeter blocks in the north and freely distributed high-rise buildings up to 80 meters high in the south.
The mayor of the village, Wolfgang Dietz, sees this contest as a basis for debate. There will definitely be discussions, he said, because the development of the area is in conflict between the need for a new living space and the economic use of the land: “We have to be careful with our area.” With the new quarter, the number of residents in the Otterbach district could nearly double, he said.
So the area will not be rebuilt overnight. Rolf Borner, Managing Director of Immobilien Basel-Stadt, spoke of a long-term time horizon of 10-15 years for the phased redevelopment of the area.
