The group of tourism residences is planning a resort on the site of a former munitions factory in the Franconian Lake District in Germany. Other German sites are in preparation.

Pierre & Vacances-Center Parcs Group (PVCP) is considering the creation of a vacation center in Franconia. The company has acquired from the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben the approximately 150-hectare site of a former ammunition factory on the small Brombachsee lake in Pfofeld-Langlau in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen in central Franconia. PVCP plans to set up a vacation center there under the brand name Center Parcs.

The Group must first eliminate the many contaminated sites such as munitions remnants and bunker facilities on the site. The company will then announce details of its plans in September.

Frank Daemen, Managing Director of Center Parcs Deutschland explains :

We can very well imagine the development of an ecologically sustainable vacation park at this extraordinary location.

This would be the seventh vacation park of PVCP in Germany and the first in Bavaria. The Group announced at the beginning of July that it planned to create two new parks in Germany. In addition to the Bavarian resort, another is to be built in Northern Germany. Two others are planned in the long term near Berlin.

The Leutkirch park in the Allgäu, which Center Parcs opened in 2018, cost around 350 million euros. This would make it one of the largest private tourism projects in southern Germany. District administrator Manuel Westphal (CSU) has come out clearly in favor of the project :

I see the establishment of Center Parcs as a great opportunity for the whole region.

According to him, the Franconian Lakes District needs tourism all year round during the tourist season and thanks to their range of weather-independent leisure activities, Center Parcs is also able to attract customers to their facilities in the autumn and winter. At that time, there are virtually no catering establishments open around Brombach's lakes because there are almost no customers.

 I can also imagine that this will lead to further investments. I like to compare it to a company, you also have to invest regularly to stay on top.

The Group currently has 25 Center Parcs in Europe.

In France, PVCP announced in July that it was abandoning its Center Parcs project in Roybon, Isère. Blocked since its launch in 2007 by multiple appeals and legal proceedings filed by the project's opponents -mainly associations for the defense of nature and the protection of the aquatic environment- the land had also become a "zone à défendre" (ZAD), occupied by militants. The Group had then communicated :

For more than ten years, legal proceedings contesting the administrative authorizations have hindered the project's implementation. The authorization to clear the land, which was essential for its realization, has become null and void, and access to the site has been blocked by Zadists who have been illegally occupying the land since 2014. Center Parcs has decided to withdraw from this project.

As for the Landes de Gascogne (Lot-et-Garonne) estate, it is scheduled to open in the spring of 2022. The Group stated :

    The project has been very favorably received and supported both by the local authorities and by residents and environmental protection stakeholders.

Three other projects, however, are still being challenged in court or fought locally: the extension of the existing Bois-Francs estate in the Eure, the Poligny project in the Jura, which is the subject of legal action against the local urban development plan, and the Rousset project in the Saône-et-Loire.