West Ham United co-Chair David Gold said that the government was "lucky" that the club was moving into the Olympic Stadium this summer because it has stopped the stadium from becoming a "white elephant." The club "will move in as tenants from the start of next season." While the deal the club struck has "led to some criticism," Gold defended it, saying that "it would have been a waste of public money had a tenant like West Ham not moved in to provide the ground with regular Premier League football." Gold said, "In a way we are lucky. We are lucky in the sense that we are 1.6 miles away from an iconic Olympic Stadium. It would not work if we were 116 miles away. So you can say that we were lucky that they built the Olympic Stadium. And thankfully, to a degree, they are lucky that they built the stadium in Stratford. Because if they built it anywhere else this would be a white elephant costing the taxpayer millions of pounds" (London INDEPENDENT, 5/9).
FACILITIES BRIEFS ...
The city of Pardubice, Czech Republic has launched an open int'l competition to redevelop its Dukla arena. The anonymous competition seeks a long-term phased masterplan to transform the 85,000 square meter athletics track into a new multi-functional sports complex, expected to be complete in '30. Focusing on track and field, basketball and handball, the upgraded city center facility will feature a £7.3M ($10.5M) indoor athletics hall and a 2,500-capacity multi-use arena (Dukla).
A cornerstone was laid "for the construction of a stadium in Harari, Ethiopia regional state, dubbed Awe Abadir," at a cost of more than 1.5B birr ($70M). When completed, the stadium will have a seating capacity of 56,000, but could "easily accommodate" as many as 100,000 standing fans. The construction work of the stadium "will be conducted in three phases." The regional state has allocated a 600M Birr ($28M) budget for the initial phase, which is expected to be completed by Dec. '16, when Harari will host the 11th Ethiopian Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Day festival (ETHIO SPORTS, 5/2).
National League side Tranmere Rovers announced a "new major club partnership with North Star Environmental Ltd., which will see the Kop Stand renamed the 'North Start Environmental Kop.'" The two-year agreement "will also see the existing scoreboard sponsors upgrade into the new naming agreement" (LIVERPOOL ECHO, 5/9).
