Avantis and Hamsters

We traveled once again to the Netherlands/German Border to visit Avantis on Friday. Avantis is a 100 hectare (250 acres) commercial/industrial park. 40 % of the site is in the Netherlands and 60% in Germany. You can check out their website at www.avantis.org It is a World Trade Center site, which is an international brand. (I never knew this). As you can imagine being located in 2 countries has some tax implications. In Germany the businesses like to locate their high capital costs there because the depreciation is quicker. Taxes are based on where the managment of the company is located. If it is on the Netherlands side it is 25% and German side is 32%. The Solland Solar company is located here. We did not visit it like we were supposed to because it was a holiday, Ascencion Day. But we noticed that a solar panel company did not have solar panels.......because it was too expensive for the company. If the building was 100% in Germany, the government would have subisidized the panels. The Netherlands does not do this.

Terri and I kept asking about endangered species and habitat protection. There is a hamster, I know it sounds funny, that kept Avantis in the courts from 1997 to 2009 for a total of 23 times. In addition to the hamster, zoning challenges were made. This was clearly urban sprawl from our standards in the MIDDLE of farm land. Back to the hamster, they created wildlife crossings for them to connect up to the 30% green space the developer set-aside. They are very little tunnels that are about 6 feet below the ground with no sky lights. I aksed about flooding and they said oh yes these tunnels flood all the time ...YIKES. IN 2002, the Dutch changed their national law to not only protect the species but also the habitat.