AC Oulu won’t even get a new stadium.
This is what Oulu’s Heinäpää stadium would have looked like. Arktes architecture office
The football club AC Oulu’s stadium project has failed. The club will inform about it on their website.
The EUR 15 million project failed due to several complaints and an increase in the cost level, the chairman of the board of OTC stadium oy, which led the project Tomi Kaismo says in the announcement.
Due to complaints, the implementation of the project was delayed for years, and during that time the cost level increased by millions.
OTC stadion oy announced three years ago that it was applying for planning permission for a 5,000-seat modern football stadium in Oulu’s Heinäpää. The stadium was supposed to be built with 75 percent private money.
The project experienced its first setback, when the locals demanded to carry out a bird survey in the stadium area, where, according to AC Oulu, “football has been played for 40 years”.
After this, two complaints were filed in the administrative court about noise nuisance, which, for example, whistling and kicking a ball cause to the residents of the nearby area.
– It is extremely sad that such a complaint paralyzes the development of the world’s most popular sport in Oulu in a situation where the project had really strong support from the city council and office holders, chairman Kaismo commented in the press release.
– It is very sad that the parties who filed the complaint did not even agree to discuss with us how the issues that worried them could have been resolved together.
AC Oulu now faces challenges regarding the place to play in the coming seasons.
The failure of the stadium project means that after a little over two years, when the playing season gets longer, Oulu will not have a place to play that meets the requirements of the Veikkausliiga for the first months of the season.