A Chinese state-owned construction contractor has landed a deal to build China’s largest soccer stadium in Guangzhou.
Yicai Global said China Construction Fourth Engineering Division won the engineering procurement construction contract to build the Guangzhou Football Park with a $328 million bid.
China Construction Fourth Engineering Division is a unit of China State Construction Engineering.
The new venue will be developed on the site where struggling Chinese property developer China Evergrande Group had tried to build its soccer stadium.
Guangzhou Football Park is expected to become China’s largest professional soccer stadium with a capacity of 73,000 spectators, China Construction Fourth Engineering Division noted.
The Guangzhou Football Park was formerly known as the Guangzhou Evergrande Football Stadium, which Evergrande designed for its soccer club.
Founder and Chairman of China Evergrande Group Hui Ka-yan envisioned a 100,000-capacity stadium, a size surpassing Europe’s biggest 99,354-capacity Camp Nou in Barcelona, Spain.
The stadium was designed with the appearance of a blooming lotus and was set to be a landmark of Guangzhou, the “city of flowers”.
With a total investment of $1.7 billion, the stadium was scheduled to be completed and put into operation by the end of 2022, according to the developer’s initial plan.
However, Evergrande halted the stadium’s construction in 2021 when it fell into a liquidity crisis.
The following year, the company returned the land to the city’s authorities for CNY5.5 billion (USD764.2 million). Guangzhou City Construction Investment Group, a local government-owned firm, took over the project.
Yicai Global further stated that the Guangdong Architectural Design and Research Institute unveiled a new design for the stadium in September last year.
It plans to create a complex consisting of a professional soccer stadium, a public fitness center, and commercial facilities, with a capacity much lower than the original 100,000 spectators.
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