Italian football club AS Roma has submitted plans for one of the largest urban regeneration projects in the country for decades.
The club’s €1.5bn (£1.1bn, US$1.7bn) plans for the Tor di Valle area in the Italian capital include the construction of a new 52,500 capacity stadium – expandable to 60,000 for major matches – surrounded by a sports, entertainment and commercial district covering 105 hectares (260 acres).
Facilities will include a “AS Roma Village”, featuring a first team training complex; a club super store; a two-tiered, themed restaurant overlooking the training pitches; and a club museum and hall of fame.
There will also be a range of additional sports facilities, three high-rise commercial properties, and an entertainment complex called CONVIVIUM filled with restaurants, bars, cinemas and shops. A series of parks will provide a vast amount of publicly accessible green space.
With ambitious transport plans connected to the development, the project is expected to create up to 12,000 jobs in the area and establish Tor di Valle as a new economic hub for south Rome.
Companies working on the project include property and infrastructure giant
Lend Lease and a group of architects, including New York-based
Meis, US-based
Daniel Libeskind and Milan,
Italy-based LAND.
According to AS Roma’s owner, American billionaire James Pallotta, the project is part of a strategy – first published in 2012 – to establish Roma as one of the world’s most successful football clubs.
Handing in the master planning application to Rome City Council (Comune di Roma), Pallotta said: “Today represents a historic milestone for the City of Rome and AS Roma.
“We’re proud of the job done by our team of international experts in the last three years and we thank the Rome Administration for the great collaboration showed since the first presentation of the project in December 2013.
“(Rome) mayor Marino and his staff have been challenging us along the way to make the project better and I believe we’ve done everything we could to make Tor di Valle-Stadio della Roma a new safe, connected, exciting and sustainable epicenter that will allow a better way to live in the city and trigger economic development in the area, with AS Roma and the new stadium serving as the anchor for many generations to come.”
Rome City Council will now review the master plan before opening up the review process to the Lazio Regional government.
If the planning application is successful, work on the project could begin as early as december 2015, with the new stadium completed by late 2017 – in time for the 2017-18 Serie A season.
The entertainment and business districts are scheduled to open in 2018.
• AS Roma currently plays its home games at the ageing Stadio Olimpico, which was first opened in 1937. The club shares the 72,000-capacity venue with bitter local rivals Lazio.
