Wintertuin Baarn has been a headache file for years
Alderman Steven de Vries is not the first alderman to be upset with the Winter Garden. The botanical greenhouse in Cantonspark, which is more than a hundred years old, has been used by Utrecht University as a botanical laboratory for almost seventy years. The glass building and the surrounding hortus were declared a national monument at the end of the eighties. After leaving the university, they came into the hands of the municipality of Baarn for the symbolic amount of one guilder. Since then, the subject has continued to occupy the city council as a real headache.
After prolonged vacancy and a renovation costing 2 million euros, the municipality awarded the Winter Garden in 2013 to a catering entrepreneur who wanted to turn it into a grand café with a butterfly garden. That plan failed after resistance from local residents who had little appetite for parties and celebrations. The then operator was bought off for an amount that the municipality never wanted to disclose. Earlier, an art gallery owner had already left the greenhouse with slamming doors.
By appointing cultural entrepreneur Edwin Kouwenberg as quartermaster in 2017, the then VVD alderman Erwin Jansma aimed for a breakthrough. Kouwenberg researched for the municipality what was possible in the monumental building. He quickly concluded that the indoor climate and the acoustics in the greenhouse would make it difficult to operate the Winter Garden cost-effectively.
Nevertheless, Jansma found several entrepreneurs willing to give it a try. A committee of 23 Baarnaars chose a plan from the Baarn company Living Story over two other candidates. Owners Karen Sikkema and Michiel van Eunen opened a tearoom with a terrace under the name Wintertuin Experience and built two escape rooms in the greenhouse with the history of the special park as the theme.
The initial optimism of the couple has cooled after four years. As the landlord of the Wintertuin, the municipality has compensated their company several times for business setbacks, such as repeatedly having to postpone the start in 2019, the consequences for corona support in subsequent years and recently the sharply higher energy bill.
The five-year lease expires next fall. Sikkema and Van Eunen have already indicated that they do not want to continue without new agreements with the municipality.