In the next few days, Vila Nova de Famalicão City Council will open an international public tender for the design, construction and operation of the future Famalicão Municipal Stadium - Sports and Business Complex.
The general lines of the tender procedure, which in addition to the construction of the new stadium will also allow for the revitalisation of a central area of the city, were presented today by the mayor, Mário Passos, at a meeting with the media that was also attended by the president of Futebol Clube de Famalicão, José Pina Ferreira, and the president of the SAD, Miguel Ribeiro.
The mayor began by saying that the strategy already announced by the municipality for this dossier - concessions for the land and building, challenging private developers to look at the area where the Municipal Stadium and training ground are located and develop a proposal that necessarily includes the construction of the new stadium - is the one that is best placed to put the work on the ground without involving municipal funding and without mortgaging the future of future generations.
A strategy that, as the mayor explained, has been gaining ‘consistency and robustness’ over the last year with the work that has been carried out by the multidisciplinary team created for this purpose, made up of lawyers, assessors, architects, economists and civil engineers, and which has been responsible for drawing up a series of studies, namely economic and financial feasibility, cost-benefit analysis, real estate valuation (CMVM), drawing up the tender procedure programme and specifications, among others.
Interested investors and developers will be presented with a plot of land with a maximum total construction area of around 85,000 square metres, where the municipal stadium, a car park and an area reserved for the construction of a multifunctional space must be built.
The stadium, which will have four covered stands, should have a minimum construction area of 19,900 square metres and a capacity of around 10,000 seats. ‘These figures may vary, because when it comes to the compulsory programme we're talking about minimum areas,’ he said.
This compulsory construction area could be complemented by a series of optional constructions, namely the creation of a business complex for commerce or services and another area for car parking.
Mário Passos also said that the concession period would be 53 years (a maximum of 3 for construction and 50 for operation).
In the end, the president of FC Famalicão's SAD, Miguel Ribeiro, didn't hide his ‘optimism’ and ‘enthusiasm’ for the model presented. ‘I believe this is a project that could be a reference and replicated around the world because it doesn't just represent a stadium to play in every fortnight. From what has been presented here, the stadium and everything that surrounds it could be the creator of a new centre for Famalicão, because the aim is for its entire surroundings to have the capacity to be enjoyed 7 days a week.’
This enthusiasm was also shared by the president of the Famalicão Football Club, José Pina Ferreira. ‘It's a project that I'm sure will be viable’.
