Education Installation of school library and canteen in Wipkingen church

The Wipkingen Reformed Church will be converted for school purposes: The City of Zurich will install a library and a multi-purpose hall in it, as well as create rooms for catering and childcare.

The municipal council clearly approved these plans on Wednesday evening with 83 votes in favor and 8 against. Neither the one-off construction costs of CHF 9.3 million nor the annually recurring rental expenses of CHF 165,600 gave rise to any comments.

Maya Kägi Götz (SP) also spoke of an innovative building project and an appropriate conversion that would meet with broad approval when she briefly presented the business as president of the responsible committee.

The Wipkingen church was built in 1909. The reformed parish has no longer needed it as a place of worship since 2019 and initially left it to the Climate Strike Rooms association. Now the city is renting the church building. It wants to start renovation work on the listed church in the first quarter of 2025. In summer 2026, it will then serve as an extension to Waidhalde school.

School space in sports hall and office building

The municipal council approved further school projects at its meeting. It approved a loan of CHF 7.7 million by 77 votes to 12 with 17 abstentions. This will enable the necessary rooms for childcare and catering to be built for the Riedenhalden school in Affoltern, which will be run as a day school from summer 2026. The plan is to convert the former sports hall, which has been used by the Affoltern table tennis club since 1986.

In addition, the City of Zurich is renting the first floor and third floor of the "West Park" office building on Pfingstweidstrasse to accommodate four primary school classes - including rooms for childcare, gymnastics and other activities.

The fact that the recently built Pfingstweid school building was already inadequate and additional space would now have to be rented caused the FDP and SVP to shake their heads. However, the municipal council clearly approved the one-off conversion costs of CHF 5.5 million and annual rental costs of CHF 454,183 by 90 votes to 18.

SDA