Atlético Madrid and construction company FCC, which is responsible for building the club's new La Peineta stadium, "have agreed to delay the completion of construction of the team's new stadium," according to Juan Casáñez of AS. Initially, Atlético was scheduled to start holding games at the new stadium at the beginning of the '16-17 season. FCC "has asked to delay the move until after that season and the club has accepted the proposal." Both parties "confirmed that a deal has been agreed." Mundo Deportivo reported that FCC had decided to stop construction "because it wanted to renegotiate the agreement signed six years ago." Club sources, however, "have said construction has been slowed down to meet the new timeline and that certain phases have been halted." One of the reasons for the delay is that the club accepted that the area surrounding the new stadium "would not be ready by August of 2016" (AS, 11/6). The AP reported Atlético said that the "completion of its new stadium will be delayed by a year." Club
spokesperson Juanjo Anaut confirmed Spanish media reports, saying, "We have agreed to establish a new deadline for
the stadium." He added that FCC asked to "slow down the building" of the stadium but that "in no case will work on it stop" (AP, 11/6). In Madrid, Bruno García Gallo said that the story goes back to '08, when Madrid City Hall signed a deal with Atlético to "transfer the club to the old La Peineta municipal stadium, which had a seating capacity of 73,000, 20,000 more than the Calderón." The club agreed to "buy the plot of land on which the stadium stood, in the San Blas district," for €41.2M. The stadium itself was "valued at zero euros, but under the terms of the agreement, Atlético had to build a new one in its place before June 2015," at a cost of €195M. To fund the project, in Atlético signed a deal in '10 with FCC and Mahou, the "brewer that had an old plant near the Calderón, under which the construction firm would demolish both the stadium and the beer factory, build 2,000 new homes, and bring the last remaining ground-level section of the M-30 beltway underground, thus completing the city’s new riverside park, Madrid Río." The profits from the property sales would be "sufficient to cover all these costs, the contract figured." But in the "post-property-boom era, the numbers no longer add up." Sources at FCC said the collapse of the market was "forcing them to renegotiate the economic terms of the agreement" (EL PAIS, 11/6).
