01.2024 | Press release
The ceremony laying the foundation stone for the new Ketteler-La Roche School building took place today. The Diocese of Limburg’s private college for social care, which is state-recognized, is being built in the new Neumühle district. From 2025 onwards it will offer modern training courses as well as other educational opportunities in social care and education for some 400 students. The new build will be just short of 4,000 square metres in size and will be subdivided into modern classrooms and seminar rooms as well as a large roof terrace, a bistro, an auditorium, and office spaces for the college administration.
“The new build for the Ketteler-La Roche School ensures the college will in the future provide an appealing learning environment with prime transportation links, offering training courses for educationalists and social care assistants in a new form but with the tried-and-true quality typical of the 88-year history of the college. We are delighted with the opportunities that will arise here for training in an important vocational field,” explains Dr. Ralf Stammberger, Pastoral and Education Head at the Diocese of Limburg. “The childcare centre likewise planned for the new district will make it possible to combine theory and practical applications in the courses.”
The Ketteler-La Roche School is the first building block on the way to developing the Neumühle district in the south of Oberursel. On a site encompassing about 30,000 square metres, Pecan Development is realizing a neighbourhood consisting of multi-family units, plots for housing, and office and commercial areas, as well as a vocational college and a childcare centre. The sustainable and resource-sparing implementation relies on energy-efficient structures boasting non-hazardous construction materials and high-density building envelopes that meet the BEG-Effizienzhaus 40 and/or 55 standard. A large part of the energy consumed on site will stem from regenerative sources. Moreover, buildings will feature PV panels and greened roofs.
“We are incredibly proud to be revitalizing this site on the meadows of the Urbach which has been wasteland for so long now. We’re creating a new, vibrant district here that will offer an ideal mix of housing, work, leisure time, and learning. We have in the process succeeded in caringly integrating local conditions and requirements into the planning and have thus done justice to the surrounding natural habitat. Marketing the plots for detached houses is already well under way, and one third of the plots have been sold. We expect to receive building permission for the multi-family units in the immediate future, meaning the basis for the next steps is already in place,” comments Markus Brod, Managing Director of Pecan Development GmbH.
The building project for the Diocese of Limburg is hugely significant: “At a time when financial resources are getting ever tighter, it is not a matter of course that a church organization can still afford to build colleges. In order to be able to finance the project in the first place, the diocese will have to sell the building on Altenhöferweg, where the existing school building stands. The revenue combined with the financial contribution of the Sisters form the cornerstones for financing this ambitious undertaking,” reveals Thomas Frings, the Diocese of Limburg’s economist.
The Order of Sisters of Divine Providence is delighted that the college it founded is gaining a new lease of life, and the Sisters are financially supporting the Diocese of Limburg by assigning to it the plot on Altenhöferweg as well as a grant for the costs of the new build of four million euros in total. “Even if we would have preferred to maintain the Ketteler-La Roche School at its original site, we are filled with joy by the new build,” remarks Sister Maria-Theresia Laux, Provincial Superior of the Order.
“The Ketteler-La Roche School is truly an Oberursel institution. There is a massive shortfall in skilled staff among educationalists in particular, which is why it is key that we train new staff locally in order to have graduates who can work in our childcare centres. That said, creating the housing we so urgently need in the new Neumühle district will ease the strain in the housing market and counteract the deficit in skilled staff at the same time. The planned apartments and houses will provide new possibilities for many people in Oberursel”, says Antje Runge, Mayor of the Town of Oberursel