Belgium top-flight venue plans in cold storage

Image: Joseph Marien Stadium, Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0

The venue plans of the top-flight Belgian professional football club Union Saint-Gilloise on the Bempt site in Forest (Belgium) hangs fire.

‘RTL info’ stated that a year back, the Brussels-Capital Region and the Municipality of Forest arrived at a declaration of intent to build a new stadium on the Bempt site in Forest, Belgium. However, the Union Saint-Gilloise lamented that the cooperation promised by the Municipal authorities on the venue project “leaves much to be desired” and their “actions speak otherwise”.

The Royale Union Saint-Gilloise, commonly referred to as the Union Saint-Gilloise and abbreviated as the RUSG, is a Belgian professional football club originally located in the Municipality of Saint-Gilles in Brussels (Belgium) although since the 1920s, the Joseph Marien Stadium in the neighboring Municipality of Forest is serving as their home venue. The club is one of the most successful in the history of Belgian football and plays in the Belgian Pro League, the top league competition for association football clubs in Belgium.

The Joseph Marien Stadium is a multiuse stadium located within the Duden Park in the Municipality of Forest in Brussels, Belgium. It is currently used mostly for football matches and is the home ground of the Royale Union Saint-Gilloise. The stadium holds 9,400 spectators and opened in the year 1919.

‘RTL info’ further stated that the club informed that it has carried out additional studies on the environmental impact of the project and also organized a design competition involving various architectural studios to ensure that the planned venue did not leave carbon footprints behind and the sustainability factor was maintained to the highest standards.

The club sent out a statement which read, “Under the stewardship of the Secretary of State for the Brussels-Capital Region Ans Persoons and in tandem with the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, talks were on and all the guidelines laid down by the Municipal Administration of Forest were followed in toto. However, we have noted that the Municipal authorities did not go ahead with submitting the new draft agreement to the Municipal Council in order for the Council to vote on the same. Going by the above development, we have arrived at a conclusion that there is total lack of initiative on the part of the current administration to go ahead with the stadium project.”

The statement concluded, “It has become apparent that the present Municipal administration is in no mood to initiate concrete steps to kickstart the venue project and they have put the venue plans in cold storage. We still hope that better sense will prevail and we are pulling out all stops to ensure that our planned venue project gets a head start at the earliest.”

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