The plans to create a bicycle parking facility for 1,800 bikes under the UB have been cancelled for now. Constructing new accommodation for the collection that’s currently being housed there is too expensive.
Since the spring, the UG has been looking for a new location to store the more than three million documents consisting of books and other publications that are currently in the UB’s basement. The space freed up by the move was supposed to become a large bicycle parking facility.
A new location for the UB’s collection would have to not only be large enough but would also need to house a climate-control system and meet fire safety requirements. According to a UG spokesperson, they’ve not been able to find such a property, and a new build is not an option.
Estimate
The current energy prices, construction costs, and the lack of workers mean the costs of a new build would be too high. The university won’t say how high the estimates were.
But this decision probably means the plans for a bike-free Broerplein by 2024 are off the table for now. Earlier this year, the university and the city said they wanted the hundreds of bikes that people park at the Broerplein every day to be moved to the basement.
It would improve traffic around the square and even allow the UG to turn the Broerplein into a ‘green lung’.