Flamengo planned venue site to go under hammer

Article posted by Coliseum, July 17^th, 2024

Image: Artist impression supplied

The City of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) has scheduled an auction of the parcel of land on which the future home venue of the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A football club CR Flamengo is likely to be built.

‘gazetadourubu.com’ stated that the dream venue of the top-flight club is slowly coming to fruition and the above land will go under the hammer on July 31st. The Flamengo must offer the minimum bid price of the land set at R$138.195m (£19.9m/€23.54m/$25.49m) to secure the location.

The Clube de Regatas do Flamengo, more commonly referred to as simply Flamengo, is a Brazilian multisports club based in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in the neighborhood of Gávea, best known for their professional football team. The club plays in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the top of the Brazilian football league system. They are one of two clubs to have never been relegated from the top division. Flamengo is the most popular team in Brazil with more than 46.9 million fans equivalent to 21.9 percent of the population that supports a team.

The 73,139-capacity Maracanã Stadium, officially named the Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho or Journalist Mario Filho Stadium, is an association football stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It serves as the residence of the CR Flamengo and the Fluminense Football Club. Owned by the Rio de Janeiro State Government, the stadium is now managed by the clubs Fluminense and Flamengo. It is located in the Maracanã neighborhood, named after the Rio Maracanã, a now canalized river in Rio de Janeiro.

The Fluminense Football Club, known simply as Fluminense, is a Brazilian sports club best known for its professional football team that competes in the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, the first tier of Brazilian football.

‘gazetadourubu.com’ further stated that on July 9^th, the City of Rio de Janeiro came out with the above auction notice in the Official Gazette for the construction of the future Flamengo stadium which would spread over more than 86,000 square meter area. The site has been managed by the Brazilian financial services company Caixa since 2009. The site identified formerly housed the Gasômetro.

The Caixa Econômica Federal, also referred to as Caixa, is a State-owned Brazilian financial services company headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. It is the fourth largest banking institution in Brazil, as well as the fourth largest in Latin America, and the 83rd largest bank in the world.

The Gasômetro site in Rio de Janeiro is a former coal-fired power plant built in the late 1920s. The site is located on the banks of the Guaíba River and features a 350-foot brick smokestack, theaters, meeting rooms, and exhibit spaces.

The land was expropriated by the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, in June.

Reliable sources stated that Caixa plans to go to court over the land expropriation issue as the financial services company say it was a “unilateral decision made by Mayor Paes”.

Riders

The Flamengo will be able to build their new home venue on the above site but it comes with quite a few riders. One of them pertains to the capacity of the stadium. The top-notch club’s planned venue must be able to hold a minimum of 70,000 spectators – a capacity which the Flamengo’s present home ground boasts.

Earlier, in May this year, Rodolfo Landim, the President of Flamengo, had detailed his plans for a new 80,000-seat stadium for the top-flight club. Landim’s vision could still materialize.

Landim had said he envisions a vertical design similar to the 81,044-capacity Santiago Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid, Spain, and the 81,365-capacity Signal Iduna Park in Dortmund, Germany. Landim also hinted that he is aiming to purchase land for the stadium at the Gasômetro site by December 2024.

Pedro Paulo of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), an ardent Flamengo fan who pulled out all stops to ensure that the Gasômetro site land is made available to the club, put in, “We have set the minimum criteria in the auction notice that the Flamengo must build a 70,000-capacity venue. They can even increase their planned venue capacity to 80,000. We have also floated the idea that the planned venue can boast a convention center.”

The second rider is that if the Flamengo goes on to buy the land their new venue will have to go on stream by 2029. The auction notice published also establishes a series of guidelines for the interested parties such as the schedule and the deadline. Once Flamengo purchases the land, the venue project report should be submitted within 18 months.

The notice issued by the City read, “The project, to be presented within 18 months from the date of signature of the Purchase and Sale Promise Term and executed within up to 36 months extendable in accordance with the law, starting from its licensing, it must be done preferably in three stages: Needs Program, Cost Estimate and Physical Schedule and Presentation of Technical Documentation.”

The third rider is that the City also wants that the planned arena should be skirted by themed areas such as interactive museums and gaming zones along with wide, accessible sidewalks and bike paths connecting the stadium to the nearby commercial and residential areas.

The planned facility should also be high on the sustainability quotient and the City wants that the stadium operators/owners should go in for rainwater harvesting, incorporate solar panels and other renewable energy sources as well as installing a green roof.

Though in June this year the Flamengo and Fluminense had been awarded a contract to manage the Maracanã Stadium for the next 20 years but the former has been contemplating the construction of its own stadium with a potential capacity to hold 80,000 fans for some time in a bid to manage matchdays better and generate increased revenue.

Things could work in Flamengo’s favor as they have the blessings of Mayor Paes.

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