Officials said that Japan's "trouble-plagued" new National Stadium, the centerpiece of the 2020 Olympics, will cost more than $2B to build, nearly twice the original estimate, and be "completed two months later than first thought," according to Elaine Lies of REUTERS. The new stadium, which will replace a now-destroyed venue built for the 1964 Summer Games, has been "beset by woes including sky rocketing costs, feuding over funding and criticism of the design as too grandiose for its intended site." Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura said that Japan will "stick with the basic design" put forth by U.K.-based architect Zaha Hadid and that construction costs will run to 252B yen ($2.1B). Construction will begin in October this year and end in May '19. A retractable roof will not be added until after the Olympics and 15,000 of the stadium's 80,000 seats will be a "much simpler movable design than originally proposed, both additional steps to cut costs." The stadium came in at 130B yen in Tokyo bid documents but cost estimates "ballooned" to 300B yen last year, prompting a "modest scaling back of the futuristic design." Shimomura said that planners were "thinking of asking for support from private companies, which media said could take the form of selling naming rights" (REUTERS, 6/29).
