The new bicycle storage facility below the UB will have room for not 1,200, but 1,800 bikes. That is, if they can find a new location to house the current collection.
‘The basement has enough room for the extra bikes’, says project leader Bert van Marum. ‘But a preliminary exploration in collaboration with the municipality hasn’t resulted in any suitable locations for the collection.
Available properties of the scale the university needs are scarce. Not only will the property have to be big enough, but it has to be suitable or able to be made suitable to store the collection.
Three million volumes
‘Structurally speaking, the property has to be able to withstand the storage of three million volumes’, says Van Marum. The property also needs to meet strict climate and fire safety requirements. The university has contracted an external property expert to continue the search.
In February, both the university and the city said they would like to have a bike-free Broerplein in two years. The hundreds of bikes that people now park in front of the Academy building will then move to the bicycle storage facility. This would improve traffic around the square and, if the UB director has any say in it, the Broerplein could then be turned into a green lung.
The exact plans for the bicycle storage facility and the Broerplein haven’t been announced yet. ‘We expect to know for sure whether we’ll have access to a suitable property by this fall’, says Van Marum.