Protest against the demolition of a pony farm in Dreieich

• ofAnnette Schlegl

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Parents of young riding students go to the barricades in Dreieich because a pony farm has to give way to the Hengstbach naturation.

A pony farm in Dreieich is about to end because nature and flood protection have priority. On Wednesday evening, this attracted around 60 parents of little riders. They vented their outrage with posters and banners in front of the community center before the members of the social committee met inside. Protests against the demolition are planned again this evening before the meeting of the building committee, and at the end of June the parents want to articulate their anger before the committee meetings of the Offenbach district. They had also sent letters to the mayor, the district administrator, the parliamentary groups and the Lower Nature Conservation Authority (UNB) in the Offenbach district.

The idyllically located Hengstbach Stud in Dreieichenhain has seen a lot of crowds in recent months because it was allowed to deal with animals even in lockdown. Owner Ingeborg Bopp reports one to three emails or phone calls that she still receives every day: “Parents want to register their children for pony rides.” hovers over her yard. “It should be over in September,” says Bopp.

The mess began in the 80s, when previous owner Günter Gesang built stables for his Arabian breed, for which he did not receive a permit – although he even went to court. In 1996, Bopp took over the stud and turned it into a family and performance-oriented riding stable, where children from four years of age can learn to ride on ponies.

In 2005 the Dreieich city council unanimously decided on a development plan for the local recreation and renaturation of the Hengstbach on 9.9 hectares between the districts of Dreieichenhain and Götzenhain. In the course of this, the stables and paddocks of the riding stables have to be dismantled, because the area is to become a floodplain. The required dismantling was justified with “unapproved legal relationships of the structures of the equestrian center”. “I filed an objection, but it was decided anyway,” says Bopp. After all, the city named three potential new locations in Dreieichenhain, Sprendlingen and Götzenhain. “The stables were privately owned,” she explains. She did have talks, but the locations were either unsuitable, sold to others or used for another type of use.

On August 26, 2016, Bopp signed a UNB clearance contract with a clearance period of five years. “Under the pressure that otherwise they would have closed my business immediately,” she says. The five years are up now. “The city has drawn up the development plan, we are just executing it,” says Sandra Klauß from the district’s press office. The riding instructor had known for a long time “that it couldn’t stay that way”. Bopp, on the other hand, still hopes that the city “may be able to change the development plan”.