Baar
Description
Baar is a municipality in the canton of Zug in Switzerland.
History
Baar is first mentioned in 1045 as Barra.
Geography
Baar has an area, as of 2006, of 24.8 km2 (9.6 sq mi). Of this area, 55% is used for agricultural purposes, while 24.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 19.9% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (0.6%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains).
The municipality is located in the northern portion of the flood plain of the Lorze river. It was originally a linear village along the road between Lake Zug and Lake Zurich. Since the 1960s it has grown rapidly. It consists of the village of Baar and the former hamlets of Allenwinden, Blickensdorf and Inwil, as well as the farm houses of Deinikon.
Industry
From 1980 to 2006, it was also home to Lego Produktion AG, a toy manufacturing plant owned by the Lego Group where some Lego parts, especially those for the Lego Technic building sets, were manufactured. In 2006, the Lego Group announced a restructuring of the current production setup including the outsourcing of some of the production work to Flextronics, a Singaporean electronics company. Lego Produktion AG in Baar was to be shut down and its operations moved to a plant now owned by Flextronics in Kladno, Czech Republic. Lego Technic parts would still be manufactured in the headquarters at Billund, Denmark, which then had a workforce of 3,000.
Baar serves as the official headquarters of Glencore, the global producer and trader of commodities, Sika AG, a chemical company with products for construction and automotive.
Baar has an unemployment rate of 2.26%. As of 2005, there were 333 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 94 businesses involved in this sector. 3,810 people are employed in the secondary sector and there are 278 businesses in this sector. 9,335 people are employed in the tertiary sector, with 1,415 businesses in this sector.
Baar is also home to the Typo3 Association, which moderates the free open source content management system Typo3.
Transportation
Baar railway station is a stop on the InterRegio service between Zürich Hauptbahnhof and Lucerne, serviced every full hour, as well as on the Zurich S-Bahn service S24 between Zug and Zürich Oerlikon. Several stops of the Stadtbahn Zug are in Baar.
In the summer months it is possible to rent free bikes to bike around Baar. This can be done near the Rathaus.