Features

2019 In Review – December

Tokyo’s new National Stadium officially opened as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended a completion ceremony for the venue that will serve as the centrepiece for next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.

As well as hosting the opening and closing ceremonies of the Games, the National Stadium will stage athletics and football events.

The 68,000-seat stadium has been designed to complement the surrounding nature, including the large green space known as the Outer Garden of Meiji Jingu Shrine. With this in mind, the façade of the stadium consists of overlapping, multi-layered eaves made of wood from Japan’s 47 prefectures.

The organising committee for the 2024 Olympics in Paris revealed plans for a new 35,000-seat arena that will showcase urban sports during the Games.

While Paris 2024 said it is too soon to confirm exactly which sports and disciplines will be contested at the venue, it promised the arena will provide a “totally new experience” and attract “new types of spectators”.

The arena will be located in the Place de la Concorde square, which connects the Champs-Elysées to the Tuileries Gardens. The venue will seek to showcase Parisian heritage while offering “exceptional” images of the Games.

English Premier League football club Everton revealed the final designs of its state-of-the-art new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock ahead of the submission of a planning application to Liverpool City Council.

Everton has projected that the 52,000-seat stadium plans will have a “transformational” impact on North Liverpool, contributing to a £1bn (€1.17bn/$1.3bn) boost to the city region’s economy, creating up to 15,000 jobs and attracting 1.4m visitors to the city each year.

A separate outline planning application will follow for a community-led project at Goodison Park, Everton’s current home.

Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel said that a new 25,000-seat multi-purpose stadium in the New Zealand city will be a game-changer after the city council approved the investment case for the project.

The covered stadium is the last of the anchor projects in the Christchurch Central Recovery Plan and will cost NZ$473m (£236m/€280m/$311m) to build.

The council is putting NZ$253m towards the project and plans on beginning detailed design and enabling works next year ahead of the start of construction in 2021.

The Los Angeles Angels signed a $325m (£247m/€293m) deal to buy the publicly owned Angel Stadium to allow the Major League Baseball franchise to remain in Anaheim through to 2050.

The agreement includes the 45,050-capacity stadium, as well as its surrounding car parks and gives the team the option to build a new stadium in place of the 53-year-old structure.

The MLB club had until December 31 to opt out of its current stadium lease or it would have been bound to it until 2029.

Image: Tokyo 2020