Izvestia has already said that two years later in Moscow it is planned to build a National Stadium for the Russian football team with a capacity of 55 thousand spectators. The pre-design work, which was carried out by metropolitan architects, has now been completed. However, permission to build this arena has not yet been received. Our newspaper tried to find out what fate awaits an ambitious project.
The stadium for the main team of the country, like all the largest sports facilities of the capital in the last quarter of a century, is being designed by the Mosproekt-4 research and development institute. In the 1990s, his employees participated in the reconstruction of Luzhniki. And in recent years, they designed the Lokomotiv stadium in Cherkizovo, the speed skating center in Krylatskoye, ice palaces in St. Petersburg and Moscow, on the Khodynsky field.
“Now at our institute there are four applications for designing football facilities at once,” the head of the Mosproekt-4 architectural studio Dmitry Bush told Izvestia. “In addition to the stadium for the Russian team, we are talking about new CSKA and Spartak arenas, as well as reconstruction of Dynamo. On our side, there are no delays in terms of time. It’s too early to talk about the design of club arenas, but our specialists have already completed pre-design work on the stadium for the team to be built in the Botanichesky Sad metro area. o means that all issues with the environmental and other services have been agreed. Now we are waiting for the resolution on the building permit made by our higher organization - the Moscow Architecture Committee. But, given the importance and scale of the facility, this resolution will most likely be submitted for approval at the public council of the city hall Moscow. "
One way or another, the construction of the stadium for the team is scheduled to begin next year. It was sponsored by the partner of the Russian Football Union - the National Football Academy Foundation, established by the most footballing domestic oligarch Roman Abramovich. This structure is ready to invest in the project more than one hundred million dollars. However, the chairman of the fund’s board, Sergey Kapkov, is very cautious in his predictions on the timing of the construction of the stadium.
“As long as we don’t have a building permit, it makes no sense to even begin designing the arena,” Kapkov explained in our conversation. “I hope that by the end of the year we will still receive it and it will be approved by the Moscow City Hall. But then there will still be many Questions. It seems to be small, but significant. For example, you need to negotiate with the owners who are located on the territory allocated for the construction. And there are so many! Three garage cooperatives, four gas stations, not to mention the All-Russian Exhibition Center, part of the territory which also falls into the construction zone ... "
“Remember, initially this area was allocated for the construction of the Spartak stadium?” Continues Sergey Kapkov. “So they eventually abandoned this option. And it’s not at all because Spartak has poor managers. They just did not manage to solve the whole mass of issues that arise even before the start of construction. Yes, even to predict the total cost here is impossible in advance. For example, it’s planned to spend about $ 250 million on a new stadium in St. Petersburg, which will be almost the same size as ours. we hope that the arena for the national team will cost us a little cheaper, but I don’t exclude the possibility that overall costs will turn out to be much higher. After all, owners who have to leave the territory allocated for construction dictate their conditions - people just see dollars in their eyes. "
However, the fund, created with the participation of Roman Abramovich, still has more opportunities in any case than even the traditionally respectable Spartak. And there is no doubt that, as soon as the building permit is approved in the capital's city hall, work in the area of the Botanical Garden will begin immediately. According to Dmitry Bush, at the end of the design, an additional one and a half year of construction will be required to build the arena. But in any case, in 2008 Russia may well get the first football national stadium. And then another year later we will be able to host the Champions League final for the first time.
Well, the team of its managers will be called upon to make the new arena profitable. So far, Sergey Kapkov and his colleagues believe that for the operation of the stadium a management company should be created, the same RFU can become a partner. And it will already depend on them whether the national stadium, located in a cozy park zone of the capital, will become one of the favorite vacation spots of citizens. A few years ago, the author of these lines was pleasantly surprised by the crowds reigning on the most ordinary weekday in the shops and museum of the famous Santiago Bernabeo in Madrid. But in Russia, football is also the number one sport.
Mikhail Shpenkov