OREANDA-NEWS. August 07, 2015. ThyssenKrupp AG officially completed the notarized transfer to the city of its ownership of the remaining areas in the eastern section of Lake Barbarasee and properties on Kruppstrasse and Masurenallee in Duisburg-Neudorf-Sud via a deed of gift. The sites will be used exclusively for sporting activities and include a roughly 3,000-square-meter commercial sports facility, a roughly 20,000-square-meter private green space and a body of water covering approx. 78,000 square meters.

Mayor Suren Link is delighted by the mutual agreement reached between ThyssenKrupp AG and the city of Duisburg: “It ensures that the entire Duisburg Sport Park including the regatta course, canoeing center, stadium, local clubs and public green spaces will be preserved for future generations. I would like to thank ThyssenKrupp AG for assuming responsibility – as in the past – for the people of this industrial and steel city. Residents and numerous visitors to Duisburg will continue to enjoy access to leisure and recreation facilities near the city center in the future.”

“As the biggest employer in Duisburg we don’t just provide many people with jobs, we also want to offer residents a suitable environment for their leisure activities,” says Thomas Schlenz, CHRO of ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe. “This gift is a further element of our commitment to being a good neighbor in Duisburg.”

City council leader Reinhold Spaniel also welcomes the transfer of the more than 100,000 square meter recreation area: “As the deputy for labor, social affairs, housing and sport it is particularly important for me to reassure the local Barbarasee water sports clubs that the existing lease and rental agreements will remain unaffected by the transfer of the sites to the city of Duisburg. The wide-ranging water sports offering is among the largest of its kind in North Rhine-Westphalia and actively supported by the work of local clubs.”

Recreational space, wooded areas and bodies of water account for around 27 percent of the urban area of Duisburg. The gift from ThyssenKrupp AG means that the city now officially owns another roughly 100,000 square meters of water and land around the Barbarasee as of the beginning of August.

As early as 1919 Friedrich Krupp AG made areas of land available to the city free of charge in the vicinity of what is now Duisburg Sport Park in Duisburg-Neudorf-S?d to enable it to create large-scale facilities, in particular a stadium and lido, in nearby Wedau to meet the recreational needs of its inhabitants.

The gift made in 1919 was extended by a transfer agreement in 1931 which included already excavated pit areas and the western section of the Barbarasee, split lengthways by a dam used as a rail track for transporting gravel and sand away from the site. There are now gaps in this dam, meaning that there is no longer a direct link to the “mainland”, but rather just two narrow islands.

The existing lease and rental agreements between ThyssenKrupp AG and the local Barbarasee clubs remain unaffected by the transfer of the properties to the city of Duisburg.

On acceptance of the gift, mutual agreement was reached between ThyssenKrupp AG and the city of Duisburg to ensure the preservation and future of Duisburg Sport Park and its wide-ranging recreation and sporting facilities for all Duisburg residents and visitors.