Two other official documents from the City of Zdanice about the observatory.
The documents are dated 1999 and 2000
To understand this documents there is some history needed.
In 1958 the idea was launched to build the observatory in the town of Zdanice. Zdanice is in South Moravia, between Brno and Vienna.
At that time Zdanice was a small town. The national communist party agreed with the observatory project under condition that the people of Zdanice build the observatory themselves.
The labor unions paid 75% of the building material.
It wasn’t a Public Observatory but a Peoples Observatory and cultural center. The only library and movie theater in a region of about 25km.
After the revolution the 1989 the direction of the observatory and the later build hotel was done by the local astronomy club.
In 1999 the city took over the observatory because there were to much problems with the management and the finance of the big observatory.
Theft and neglect were the main problems.
In 2001 the observatory was closed for the public. In 2002 the city sold the observatory to a private investment company.
The city sold the observatory because of a lack of budget for maintenance. The biggest cost was the big hotel who was build In the 1970’s.
The construction of the hotel is of bad quality. The main building with the observatories and the planetarium is in good condition.
My idea was to demolish the hotel and only keep the observatory building. The city didn’t agree, for nostalgic reasons, and it was impossible to get a building permit.
On the Czech Astronomy Forum there is a lot of discussion about the closure of the building and me buying the inventory.
The discussion is how it comes that the Czech State and the City of Zdanice didn’t took care of the observatory?
This documents prove that the city did everything they could but the observatory and the hotel were to big for a small city as Zdanice.
The observatory is the victim of the transition from communism to capitalism.
Also there are a lot of observatories in the Czech Republic with more modern equipment. Nearby there is the beautiful observatory of Brno.
The old Observatory of Zdanice didn’t have any added value.
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