Rijeka’s seaside stadium to open in 2020

The Croatian city of Rijeka could boast a new 14,000 seat football stadium by 2020, if plans to develop the facility are given the green light.

A €25 million training centre has already been built for Rijeka Football Club, and now the city hopes to complement this with the new Kantrida Stadium.

Kantrida Stadium manager, Drazen Kalac, told the ESSMA summit in Lyon last week that the new venue would be built just 100 meters from the sea.

It will have about 14,000 covered seats and will meet the standards of UEFA category 4.

The stadium will contain approximately 3,000 seats for VIP visitors and sponsors, around 1,000 family seats and some 4,000 seats for the most loyal supporters.

There would also be fan shops, catering outlets and a hotel built in the vicinity of the stadium.

Kalac said planning permission from the city council for the €40 million stadium was expected in February, but that permission would also have to be obtained from the state because it is being built so close to the sea.

We hope to receive that in the first half of this year and then we will begin the detail design, which we expect to finish at the end of this year. We will start building work next year.

Our estimation is that building work will take two years, so we expect to open the stadium at the end of 2019 or beginning of 2020.

He said work on the training centre had been completed in 11 months. It covers 5,000 sq meters and boasts five pitches, three of which are hybrid, one artificial and one natural grass.

Architect Gino Zavanella has been engaged for the project. He said:

We want the stadium of Rijeka to be unique, safe and confortable, where the supporter is really going to feel as the twelfth player, where the day of the game is going to be a special celebration day for everyone and where various services of high quality are going to be offered.

@PanStadiaArena