Eutin at a standstill: The city jeopardizes an empty department store!

Eutin at a standstill: The city jeopardizes an empty department store!

Eutin, the city of silent business! The former LMK department store, which has been a shadow of itself for years, not only gives Eutin dreary walls, but also a bitter loss of trade tax revenue. The shop windows are glued with posters, customer traffic long ago. The resentment towards the owner that is no longer visible, Thomas Menke, grows in the Urban Development Committee. His only answer to the urgent inquiries from politicians? Silence! A proposal drifts through the air: the introduction of a penalty tax for empty properties.

"Such a tax could avoid unjustified speculation," explains Hans-Wilhelm Hagen, the chairman of the Eutin business association. But he also has a strange message: "In Eutin there is movement, the owners strive to win tenants." In the meantime, the city remains shy in answers; One spokeswoman only said that they were in exchange with the owners. But the big standstill is pending, because Menke is silent in influence. And where is the answer to the question of how Eutin should deal with three large vacancies, including the abandoned Sky market and the corner building on Peterstrasse for months?

already failed: nationwide advance for vacancy tax

In the past, the idea of a nationwide vacancy tax floated through Germany. Landau in Bavaria ventured the first step and wanted to introduce 2 percent of the real estate value per year as tax - the proposal failed miserably. Instead, penalty payments were decided for unused apartments. Where is justice for consumers? Eutin Mayor Katrin Engeln and other local votes warn of an interference with the owners' property rights. "Nobody can be forced," she says. Thomas Buchholz also refers to the need for cooperation between city and owners, instead of draconian measures against vacancy.