Municipal council comes under time pressure for planned re-zoning

As the new Ökihof in Walchwil is now planned to be by the railway station, the valuable property of the former Wihel farm is to be transferred back into the residential zone. In the meantime, the owner, who was partially expropriated 16 years ago, has announced that he will take legal action.

Only the road separates the former Wihel farm from Lake Zug. It’s clear: this land is very, very valuable. Even though the empty house and the barn next to it are listed buildings, and need to be maintained.

But the property is no longer in the residential zone. This was the case until 2006, before the municipality of Walchwil transferred it to the Zone of Public Interest (OeIB) – i.e. an area for municipal buildings – and ‘materially expropriated’ the ownerThomas C. Weissmann. This meant that Thomas Weissmann still owns the property, but his freedom of action is – partly – restricted.

He thereby received a compensation of around CHF 1.3 million, which was transferred to him in 2013. Negotiations between the municipality and Weissmann on the purchase of the land failed, because their ideas about the price were too far apart.

The deadline expires in March 2023
Most of the information about this story comes from documents that are available on file at the Walchwil Municipal Chancellery (Gemeindekanzlei). This is because the re-zoning is to be reversed at the request of Thomas C. Weissmann. This is in line with the wishes of the Walchwil municipal council, which already raised this issue in May 2021 and informed the owner about it.

This re-zoning requires urgency, however. According to the legal clarification by the municipal councilthe time limit for reclaiming the CHF 1.3 million ‘material expropriation’ will expire after ten years. That would be the case in March 2023.

This is the main reason why the municipality is pushing for the re-zoning of the ongoing, local planning revision. If everything goes according to the municipal council's plan, the municipal assembly on 30 November will approve this change, and the cantonal building directorate (Baudirektion) will approve it next spring.

An underground Ökihof is no longer under consideration
The municipal council wants to give up the land in the Wihel because its plans for the area have fallen through. On the one hand, it considered creating a parking area for the owners of the boats currently on the buoy field, or a possible harbour facility.

The site of the former Wihel farm, where both buildings are listed.            
The community planned an Ökihof below the current parking lot behind the former Wihel farm
The existing Ökihof (right) is to be enlarged by the shed on the left and the station building.
The farmhouse (right) and the barn are listed buildings.                  Photos: Jakob Ineichen

On the other hand, the municipal council had plans for an underground Ökihof at the property behind the Farm Wihel. Access to it would have been from the Artherstrasse through the Wihel property. This underground Ökihof proved to be too expensive to implement, however, and, without sunlight, would have been tricky from the point of view of labour law. "In addition, the space available is no longer adequate under today's Ökihof requirements," says the mayor (Gemeindepräsident) Stefan Hermann (Mitte party).

Waste disposal will continue to take place by the railway station
The municipality is instead striving to expand the existing Ökihof by adding the adjacent goods shed and the former station building to it. Negotiations with the owners are currently underway, according to Stefan Hermann.

This means that: "There is no longer any claim to leave the property in the Wihel in the OeIB zone," according to the mayor.

The municipality also has sufficient land reserves for public buildings, and thereby no longer needs this land.

The expropriation was allegedly carried out without personal information
The owner of the property in Wihel is Thomas C. Weissmann. As a result of a so-called parcelling, this property now comprises of two plots of land, which are considered as one in the ongoing re-zoning procedure.

Weissmann's mother came from Walchwil, and he has lived in the community for some time. The former, long-standing chairman of a Europe-wide IT group claims that he was not informed about the re-zoning in 2006.

"I did not subscribe to the Zug Official Gazette (Amtsblatt), in which the zoning plan amendment was advertised, and therefore heard nothing about it. No one from the municipality ever contacted me personally."

In his opinion, the re-zoning took place “on flimsy grounds and not legally. There was no concrete project at that time; there were only loose ideas floating around. But a municipality cannot simply create zones of public interest." As he was not informed of the re-zoning, he had been denied the opportunity to take action against it.

Should there be compensation in any case?
As a result of the curtailment of ownership rights associated with the re-zoning, compensation to the amount of CHF 1.3 million was due, as mentioned above. If the re-zoning takes place before the expiry of the ten-year period, this means that Weissmann must repay this money.

In this case, he would consider filing an – at the moment unspecified -  lawsuit against the municipality of Walchwil, he says. He would do this in order to be compensated for what he considered to be an unlawful re-zoning in 2006.

The municipality would have to buy the land
Apart from that, Thomas C. Weissmann has another card up his sleeve with regard to the re-zoning of private land into zones of public interest: the so-called ‘Heimschlag’. This means that the owner can demand that the municipality buy the land in question from him. Weissmann believes that this scenario is unattractive for the municipality, as he explains:

"The municipality would not only have to acquire the property for a significant sum, but would also have renovate the two protected buildings at a cost of several million, without currently having a concrete use for it."

Assuming that Thomas C. Weissmann plays the "Heimschlag" card: the cantonal valuation commission would subsequently have to determine the values of the property in the Wihel – or, in the event of a dispute, this would have to be done by the courts.

Weissmann has already announced to the Zuger Zeitung newspaper that, if necessary, he will go as far as the Federal Court (Bundesgericht) if his expectations of the price are not met. He would not say what sum he has in mind at this time.

The property would probably besold
If he doesn’t make use of the ”Heimschlag” ruling, Thomas C. Weissmann would sell the land in the Wihel after the re-zoning. He has ruled out the option of building on it himself "I'm over 70,” he say, “and at some point you've built enough in your life."