Featured image credit: Municipality of Vilnius
Vilnius City Municipal Council has approved changes to a wide-ranging project that will include a new National Stadium for Lithuania.
The council has approved adjustments to the cost of the project and the purchase of additional contracts, while a proposal to shorten the payment schedule in order to reduce the amount of borrowing interest has also been approved.
As a result, the city council and Lithuania’s Ministry of Education, Science and Sports will allocate €157.2m (£134.5m/$170.5m) for the project – €1.2m more than was originally anticipated. The construction cost will now stand at €121.7m.
The council said its decision to shorten the loan repayment period will save it €38.1m in interest, which is why the overall cost increase of the project is relatively low.
The 15,000-seat National Stadium would be capable of hosting football and athletics events, with the wider complex to include facilities for other sports such as basketball, gymnastics and boxing.
Vilnius Mayor, Valdas Benkunskas, said: “The council decided that the city needs both the National Stadium and all the social infrastructure planned around it for sports, culture, and education.
“This decision allows us to move forward and move to the next stage – coordination of changes with the European Commission and national institutions and coordination of the schedule of construction works with a new investor.”
Benkunskas added that the stadium could be finished by the end of 2026.
In May last year, a construction permit was awarded for the stadium. Work on the venture commenced in January 2022 with the demolition of a previously aborted project in Vilnius that had been labelled a “national disgrace”.
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