As early as ten years ago, the company, still under President Mayor Heinz Schaden, decided to further hollow out the Mönchsberg and to enlarge Garage B – the rear, right-hand entrance – by 650 parking spaces. Then as now, on the one hand, the aim was to create more space on a peak day and, on the other hand, to get car-free inner city squares that were still parked, such as Kapitelplatz. After Thursday’s decision, the Chamber of Commerce and the city center merchants are cheering, especially affluent customers from Bavaria would not want to come to the city center by bus, the expansion is also “indispensable” for the 1,600 businesses in the city center, after all the shopping centers on Outskirts also thousands of parking spaces in front of the front door. “Even for many of the 14,000 employees in the city center it is not possible to get to their workplace by bus or train,” says Economic Chamber President Peter Buchmüller. Even customers from a catchment area of ​​around 100 kilometers cannot reasonably be expected to use public transport to go shopping, to eat or to go to the theatre.

The opponents, first residents in the noble Nonntal district, where the excavation pit is to be created during the work in the mountain, and later the Greens in the city first put forward environmental protection arguments, now they fear a financial disaster. The planned construction costs have increased over the past ten years from around 20 million euros back then to just under 40 million euros now, so a new parking space would cost around 60,000 euros. Since the parking garage company WILL bear the construction costs alone & the opponents fear that after completion there would even have to be advertising to attract more users to the garage and thus more traffic in the city centre. Green City Councilor and as such a member of the Supervisory Board Ingeborg Haller fears that the parking garage company WILL turn from a cash cow to a subsidized operation after the construction, »for 650 new spaces that we will only need a few days a year, tax money will be paid here burned«. Haller also recalled that 3,000 people from Salzburg demanded a citizen survey with one signature, but the signatures were not recognized due to a formal error.

Angelika Gasteiner, who also represents the Greens on the supervisory board of the Parkgesellschaft, believes that the two garages A and B of the Mönchsberggarage are only really busy on a few days a year. »We all know when the two garages are full, namely in summer when it rains, but not a single Salzburger drives into the old town«. However, management always counts on full occupancy, even if the entrance lights are only on “red” for a few minutes a day.

Michael Hudelist