Featured image credit: City of Lausanne
The City of Lausanne has backtracked on plans to demolish the historic Stade Olympique de la Pontaise in favour of repurposing the facility.
The 15,700-seat stadium initially opened in 1904 before being fully redeveloped for Switzerland’s staging of the 1954 FIFA World Cup. Swiss Super League football club Lausanne-Sport moved out the venue to its new Stade de la Tuilière in late 2020, with second-tier Challenge League team FC Stade Lausanne Ouchy now calling the Pontaise home.
It also remains a venue for athletics and has been hosting Lausanne’s annual round of the Diamond League, the Athletissima, ahead of the meet’s planned move to a redeveloped Stade Pierre-de-Coubertin.
While the Pontaise had been primed for demolition, Mayor of Lausanne, Grégoire Junod, has now said its future is set to be as a redeveloped part of a major real estate project for the city.
Junod told 24 Heures that three architectural firms, commissioned by the city, “have shown that we could find the necessary built volume, of the order of 115,000 square metres, or 80 to 90 million in land values, by densifying around the stadium”.
The Mayor said it is therefore possible “to create a relatively dense neighbourhood – we are talking about 3,000-3,500 homes on the Plaines-du-Loup”, while keeping the stadium.
Junod said “this is an opportunity to do something unique and very stimulating”, adding that the City-owned stadium could be “converted to multiple uses, with a field that could become a public space”.
Junod said he opposes the proposed classification of the stadium site as a historical monument, stating that “if we want to reconvert the Pontaise, we need a certain flexibility”. He stated a design competition will be launched for the project, while adding that work would not be able to begin until Stade Pierre-de-Coubertin is completed. “We are therefore talking about 2028-2029 for the opening of the construction site,” he said.
Junod said the project would be partly financed through private investment, with the City assuming the “costs of public objects and developments”.
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