Stadion Feijenoord, the entity which owns and manages De Kuip, has announced it has paid off a loan from Goldman Sachs that was taken out in association with the failed attempt to deliver a new stadium for Dutch Eredivisie football club Feyenoord.
The loan from the US investment banking company was initially taken out to help finance the start-up phase of Feyenoord City, a major project that intended to redevelop the area around the club’s current De Kuip home with housing, while building a new 63,000-seat stadium on the banks of the River Maas.
The project was given the green light in 2017 only for Feyenoord to officially drop the plans in April 2022. Stadion Feijenoord has since been hamstrung by the debt and accumulating interest from the Goldman loan, but director Lilian de Leeuw told Algemeen Dagblad that the debt of over €15m (£12.5m/$16.8m) was paid off during the summer.
She said: “That means we have more financial space. And that’s necessary, because there is a lot of overdue maintenance on the stadium (De Kuip). We have drawn up a multi-year plan, and now we can really get to work on that.”
The Rotterdam club has been weighing up its future at De Kuip, its home since the stadium opened in 1937, for more than a decade. De Leeuw said the debt related to the aborted new stadium project has kept De Kuip in a financial stranglehold, “while we really had to invest in the stadium, since Feyenoord will continue to play in De Kuip for at least another 10 to 15 years”.
De Leeuw explained that a recent pact with the Municipality of Rotterdam has allowed the Goldman debt to be paid off. Stadion Feijenoord has agreed to forgo hosting concerts at De Kuip, making housing development in the local area easier, in exchange for a payment of €11.8m.
De Leeuw’s comments regarding renovation work at De Kuip come after De Moderne Kuip (DMK), an organisation that has campaigned for the redevelopment of Feyenoord’s home, spelled out its fresh vision for such a venture back in February 2023.
