Venice grandiose stadium-arena plans

Image: Venice Municipality

The Municipality of Venice (Italy) has unveiled plans for an investment project the price tag of which stands at €333.8m (£278.4m/$367.5m). The investment project also comprises a sports complex which will come armed with a new 16,000-seat stadium for the Serie A football club Venezia F.C., and a 10,000-seat arena.

The ‘Municipality of Venice’ stated that an investment of 333 million euros will be distributed to 28 Municipalities of the Metropolitan City, and the project – ‘Bosco dello Sport’ – will be built in Tessera (Italy) and along with the stadium and arena, will include the completion of a road network linking up Ca’ Tessera Venice Airport, internal urbanization, landscape works, and an educational area.

The grand scheme of things is to build a multipurpose complex which will be throbbing with activities seven days a week and will keep the cash registers jingling. The €93.5m of funding will be picked up by Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), plus €189.9m by the Municipality itself.

The ‘Municipality of Venice’ further stated that the above plans were presented recently in the auditorium of the Metropolitan City of Venice.

Stress has been placed on the sustainability quotient with a green area of almost 79 hectares, a large ecological and sustainable structure, the Municipality said, in which sports facilities will “rise in the middle of wooded areas”.

The project is intended for completion by 2026, with a view to its facilities being utilized for that year’s Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games.

The 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Olympic Winter Games and also known as Milano Cortina 2026, is an upcoming international multisport event scheduled to take place from February 6^th to February 22^nd, 2026 in the Italian Cities of Milan, Lombardy and Cortina d’ Ampezzo, Veneto.

The Municipality said the stadium is mainly conceived for football, but will also be developed with a view to hosting other sports such as rugby union. In July 2018, Venezia F.C. and the Municipality of Venice unfolded plans for a new 18,000-seat stadium to replace the team’s historic current home.

The present facility of Venezia F.C. – the 11,150-capacity Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo in Venice – sits in a remote location and is far too constrained to facilitate commercially viable operations with greater capacity. Looking at these factors, a plan was unfolded way back in 2018 to build a venue and commercial hub in Tessera, beside Venice’s airport. In fact, speculations were going on for the last 15 years to build an arena at Tessera, but nothing came to fruition.

The Venezia F.C.’s home ground primary means of access is by boat. Upgrades to the Penzo were made for the club’s return to Serie A this season.

Maintained the Mayor of Venice, Luigi Brugnaro, “The Bosco dello Sport, which will rise in Tessera, is the heart of the project and holds everything together – health, physical activity, but also knowledge and development of people. Professional sports are the driving force for all sporting activities in the area. We are the only City in Italy that does not have sports facilities, has never had them. We have been asking for the same for the last 40 years and will finally be able to realize the dream of many Venetians, creating a sports center that will throb with activities seven days a week.”

Added Brugnaro, “I am also very happy with the fact that the project focuses on sustainability and the environmental aspect. This is an important element. Having a stadium with a capacity of 16,000 people and a 10,000-seat arena will make it more attractive to organize events that today find it difficult to take place in our territory and move to nearby provinces and Cities.”

He concluded, “Furthermore, the environmental impact aspect should not be forgotten. This new design completely eliminates a previous design that provided for the introduction of 600,000 cubic meters of commercial, management and tourist-hotel elements. We wanted to keep only the sports facilities and expanded the green area to a total of 115 hectares.”

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