TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/947139
purely out of curiosity." There were a lot of positive signs in the report. "The fascinating thing to me was firstly that the hardware was pret- ty well preserved. The was a huge investment backlog, obviously, but I thought it had great charm. Sec- ondly, it's a great racing surface built on ideal subsoil." Just after the fall of the wall, Berlin experienced a post-reunification euphoria, said Schöningh, "but by 1993 or 94 peo- ple realized that economic recovery wouldn't happen so quickly and pric- es collapsed. By 2006 or 2007, Ber- lin was probably at rock bottom and there was a lot of disillusionment." Into that environment stepped Schöningh, who saw the growth po- tential in a track in a metropolitan area growing by a net 80 to 100,000 people per year. "I thought if there's a place in Germany where a race- track has potential, it's in Berlin, which was the emerging capitol if everything goes right." He spent 3 million euros on the ini- tial purchase, and has poured that number into it several times over, repairing and rebuilding stands, up- grading crumbling hospitality; even making the bathrooms work again. "When I arrived, we had terrible hospitality areas with grubby chairs. It was not state-of-the-art and it was incredibly important that we had adequate facilities in order to find partners who were willing to spend