Neubrandenburg (dpa/mv) - The city of Neubrandenburg wants to bring new life to a partially empty shopping center with a primary school. As the city administration announced on Wednesday, the prefab school on the Datzeberg, which dates back to the 1970s, has to be renovated for several million euros, among other things because of fire protection requirements. During the renewal of the electrical and heating systems from 2024, the current 180 primary school students will not be able to stay in the building. In order to keep the district lively, the city wants to rent several floors in a shopping center almost 200 meters away.

"We can imagine installing a district meeting place there," said Mayor Silvio Witt (independent). That would also work with a supermarket on the ground floor. The Datze Center is more than 50 percent empty. For the students, the move means a small change of location, for the district the preservation of the primary school location. There is no other suitable building there.

Witt also offered that rooms in the shopping center built in the 1990s could also be rented for ten years. Then one could decide differently about the future of the prefab school, which was designed for around 400 girls and boys.

Around 4,000 people live in the district on the Datzberg, which is characterized by high-rise buildings, and Neubrandenburg has a total of around 64,000 inhabitants. Similar shopping centers were built in many communities in eastern Germany after 1990, which in many places are vacant due to retail problems.