Mayor Dr. Felix Schwenke was on site for the Bieber and Bieber-Waldhof districts

The Lord Mayor emphasized that the establishment of different industries is just as important as maintaining companies already based here in order to strengthen Offenbach as a business location in the long term. In addition to technology and the creative industries, services with offices are also of central importance. The city center, the port and Kaiserlei offer ideal conditions for this. Offenbach is now in demand as a location - companies appreciate the good connections and the short distances, including in matters of approval. Economic development does not happen by chance, there is work, a plan and many discussions behind it, emphasized Schwenke. It is important to keep existing companies in the city and to create the conditions for new companies to settle here. The city has recently achieved some successes in this regard: The valve manufacturer Samson with 2,000 jobs and the biotech company BioSpring will settle in the new Offenbach Innovation Campus in the east of the city. The ground-breaking ceremony for Samson took place on June 20 and the 250 million euro project is on schedule. The creative industries are also important for Offenbach; various creative agencies are based in Nordend and the new building at the harbor will provide the Hochschule für Gestaltung with a new location. The company Advanced - a German e-bike company - which sells more than 100,000 bicycles per year, is moving to the port.

Other key topics of city policy for the Lord Mayor include the development of the city center, affordable housing, climate and environmental protection as well as a good infrastructure for education and transport.

One of the first topics to be addressed, which came up repeatedly during the event, was the traffic situation in Dietesheimer Strasse along the Bieber-Nord development area. High traffic density and non-compliance with the speed limit in the 30 km/h zone were discussed. An increase in traffic has been recorded in the past year and is a burden not only for residents but also for visitors to the cemetery, and especially for the youngest children on their way to school. The main concern here is the pupils of the Bieber-Nord interim school, right next to the construction site of the future educational complex.

Jan Schmidbauer from the road traffic authority said that the average speed of motorists was moderate according to the city's last major measurement in 2021 and that motorists in Dietesheimer Straße mostly adhered to the 30 km/h speed limit. However, minor violations were repeatedly recorded. This is also shown by the most recent short-term measurement at the end of May this year. Nevertheless, Schmidbauer suggests carrying out a new measurement, even over a longer period of time. This would allow the traffic volume to be recorded again and then assessed.

In this context, the guests also drew attention to the structural condition of Dietesheimer Straße in the adjacent Bieber-Nord development area. Due to the construction work, the expansion and routing are still provisional and "unfinished". Simon Valerius, Head of the Office for Planning and Construction of the City of Offenbach, explained that the road had not yet been completed due to the construction site situation. This cannot be changed at the present time, as it is a construction site and heavy trucks and construction vehicles have to drive onto it again and again. However, Valerius emphasized that the city plans to upgrade Dietesheimer Straße in the long term. With regard to the excessively high speeds, Valerius said that drivers have to slow down considerably due to the change in the routing of Adam-Marsch-Straße, which means that they enter Dietesheimer Straße at a lower speed. Nevertheless, the Planning and Building Department and the Mobility Department will examine measures to limit speeds.

The guests were also interested in the completion of construction of the Bieber-Nord educational complex and the opening date of the school. A three-form entry elementary school for 300 pupils and a day nursery with six groups for 124 children up to the age of six will be built at the future site on Willi-Bauer-Straße. According to the current schedule, the elementary school is due to open at the beginning of 2024, provided nothing unforeseen happens. In order to make the route to school along Dietesheimer Straße safe in future, the city of Offenbach would like to incorporate parents' previous experiences into the design of the route. During the event, parents were asked to indicate which route is currently used most frequently and where there is a lack of lighting, for example.

A lot has also happened in the Bieber-Nord development area in recent months. In addition to the ramp and stairs at the S-Bahn overpass and the redesigned forecourt to the S-Bahn station, the green corridor with the large children's play area has now been opened for use.

Over the course of the evening, the conversation also turned to nature conservation. Since the beginning of this year, there has been clear evidence of at least one beaver on the southern Bieber upstream of the Obermühle. At a highly frequented spot just before the first bridge south of the Obermühle, the beaver had built a dam at the beginning of February, which was unfortunately completely destroyed in mid-February. As the beaver is strictly protected, its structures may not be destroyed and so the Office for the Environment, Energy and Climate Protection, as the lower nature conservation authority, initiated an investigation. The guests were informed about the current status of the investigation by the mayor on site.

As no representative of the environmental authority was present that evening, a live call was made to the head of the department, Alexander Jeschke from the environmental authority. He announced that no perpetrator had yet been identified, but that the state police had been called in in the meantime. In addition, the Environment Agency would like to provide more information in future via the website or the newly founded Beaver Working Group. The best thing to do is to simply leave the beaver alone and keep your distance from its structures. The site on the southern Bieber will continue to be monitored with regard to new activities and the reconstruction of the dam. However, the Office for the Environment, Energy and Climate Protection is always happy to receive reports of new beaver activity or pictures, which are of course taken at a respectful distance, and asks that any potential problems, such as flooding or renewed encroachment, be reported by email to umweltamtoffenbachde.

The discussion continued with garbage deposits in Germaniastrasse. In this context, Mayor Schwenke and his team referred to the 48-hour waste removal guarantee, which has been implemented since the beginning of the year thanks to a large-scale restructuring and, above all, digitalization process in the city group. Illegal waste that is reported via the city's defect detector is removed within 48 hours of receipt.

The prerequisite for the 48-hour litter-free guarantee is the use of the Offenbach defect reporter, which citizens can find on the city's website: https://www.offenbach.de/maengelmelder.

Some guests also complained that for some time now, the Geschwister-Scholl-School, the nearby daycare center and the Bieber-West playground have been emitting increased noise emissions and impairing the quality of life of local residents. The public order office is aware of this problem and reports are investigated. In addition, the municipal police carry out regular checks. At the same time, the Lord Mayor emphasized that the city police are doing what they can. Priorities would of course also be shifted according to the number of complaints. Even though the city of Offenbach is one of only four municipalities in Hesse, along with Kassel, Wiesbaden and Darmstadt, to have a 24-hour city police service seven days a week, the daily reports do not stop. The number of reported disturbances of the peace in Offenbach has quadrupled in the past year.

Residents have the option of contacting the service point of the public order office with complaints by telephone - telephone number 069 8065-2860 - or online via www.offenbach.de/stadtpolizei.

In the wake of the energy and climate crisis and the associated question of how households can cover their energy supply in the future, some guests also asked questions about the possible use of district heating and geothermal energy in Bieber and Bieber-Waldhof.

The mayor explained that Offenbach has a district heating network that will be further expanded over the next ten years. To this end, the city of Offenbach is working on a municipal heating plan in which Energieversorgung Offenbach AG (EVO) will invest a three-digit million sum in the coming years. Whether Bieber and Bieber-Waldhof can also be supplied with district heating depends, among other things, on where and how many more data centers are built in Offenbach. This is because the heat from the data centers is fed into the district heating network as waste heat.

With regard to the use of geothermal energy, Simon Valerius, Head of the Building Authority, announced that the test drilling for geothermal energy in Bieber has been completed. In principle, there is potential for the use of geothermal energy. However, the suitability would have to be examined separately for each individual property.

Finally, Mayor Schwenke provided an update on the fiber optic expansion and the resulting construction sites in the city area. The city is monitoring the construction work in principle, but requests immediate notification to baustellen-halteverboteoffenbachde if an unsecured construction site is sighted or poorly executed dismantling work on sidewalks after fiber optic cable work is discovered. This will then be investigated.

Despite the numerous topics, many questions could be clarified directly or afterwards in discussions with the representatives of the authorities and municipal utilities.