Featured image credit: Qingbao Meng on Unsplash
China Construction Fourth Engineering Division has been appointed to build a new 73,000-capacity football stadium in Guangzhou.
The unit of China State Construction Engineering made the announcement on its official WeChat account, according to Chinese news website Yicai Global. The winning bid for the Guangzhou Football Park contract was worth a reported CNY2.4bn (£260m/€305m/$334m).
The stadium will be built on the site that had been intended to house a new home of Chinese Super League club Guangzhou FC, which is owned by real estate giant China Evergrande Group.
In August 2022, Evergrande announced that it would receive RMB5.5bn after cancelling a contract for land-use rights concerning a project to develop a stadium with a capacity of at least 80,000 seats in Guangzhou.
Evergrande had bid for the land use for a site designated for sports facilities and industrial use in the Xie Village area of Guangzhou, ultimately entering into a contract with the Guangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau in April 2020. At that time, Evergrande said it had broken ground on what it claimed would be the world’s largest football stadium.
Evergrande’s planned stadium had been due to be completed by the end of 2022, but the company was forced to halt work in 2021 after falling into a liquidity crisis, before cancelling its land-use contract the following year. Evergrande had planned on building a further three to five stadia across China with capacities of between 80,000 and 100,000.
In September 2023, a new design for the stadium was revealed by the Guangdong Architectural Design and Research Institute, and the construction contract has now been awarded.
With a capacity of 73,000, the stadium will not be as big as the venue originally planned by Evergrande but it would still be the largest football stadium in China.
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