Place: Weida

Contact: Robert Bankwitz and his father (also Robert)

Description: Robert Bankwitzs Father, Dr. Robert, has the intention to donate part of his three ha Area with ruins and an old building permission to a group that would bring forward alternative ecological building and communal living.

This coincides strongly (perhaps perfectly) with Joachim Thomes intention to realize claybuilding designs for free communal houses and the general vision of yunity to create freely shared spaces.

Further information:
The building permission is old and the city might be looking to revoke the building permission if nothing happens there soon.
The city is probably highly interested to get young people to move towards the city because of declining population.

The Land is situated next to a river here: 50.776351, 12.064655
There are ruins on that land and a dump site with potentially additional reusable building materials for other projects.

Meeting Dr. Robert Bankwitz and Joachim Thome

On Thursday 25th of August i traveled to Weida and met up with Dr. Robert Bankwitz to synchronize on the intentions towards community building on the 3ha of Land in Weida.
Dr Robert Bankwitz welcomed me warmly and very caring. He calls himself an anarchocapitalist with the main values being selfownership and strict rejection of violence. He worked as an engineer and is a member of the city council in Weida.

The story of the building place in Weida: Dr Robert Bankwitz bought the land 21 years ago in order to build a fully self designed community place there. He had his focus on ecological aspects with mostly technical solutions like ecological building materials , do it yourself approaches and local waste management.
His design was accepted but he missed the chance to start the community place and the year after the hype to build fully on board sketched community places faded away.

One year ago Dr Robert Bankwitz stopped working and by that had the time again to review the old plans of building a community place , wit an updated approach.
So he started to calculate what kind of investment (calculated in money) would be necessary to build the place with the technologies he has in mind and told me the four ways he could imagine to participate and/or get paid to let the ground go.

Selling the land immediately: For 150.000 euro he would be willing to sell the land to other people and step back from the project.

Getting a first approval from the city council for new building plans and then selling to the people who want to take over: For 200.000 euro he would help getting the stone rolling again and then step away from the project.

Getting new plans approved: For 250.000 euro he would help getting all the legal procedures done to have the new plans accepted legally and then step away from the project.

Stay with the project: This is the solution he clearly likes the most. He would help with the full legal process and his knowledge and stay part of the community. For that he would be paid 300.000 euro worth of cooperative shares instead of being paid money directly.

He also stated that while being good with technical solutions he has no experience with the necessary community process.

The Land: We had a 2 hour walk across the Land and the surroundings. The land is directly on the edge of the Weida (river) and slopes north west (little sun in winter). It is rocky towards the river and clay towards the inner land.
There are several 4 story tall brick buildings in a non reconstructible state.

You can get into contact with dr Robert Bankwitz and also have a look at the land.

Pros and Cons for setting up community buildings in Weida as a longterm solution for a wuppspace:

Pros:

The place is available !
Dr Robert Bankwitz lives close to the place and knows the city council and the city
The building plans have already been accepted 20 years ago and dr Robert Bankwitz is accustomed to the process
City might be interested in having young people settle there
City infrastructure is close by

Iffy pros:

If Robert Bankwitz (Son of dr Robert Bankwitz) makes his place in Gera accessible for yunity we have a close base

Cons:

Close to street with car noise
north slope
having to face german bureaucracy

Iffy cons:

If other groups join the project perhaps having to organize with people that are not familiar with low money approach

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