Rome, the road to the new stadium is complicated: first postponements in the Municipality

The commitment is all there, but the feeling is that the days of the “magnificent and progressive” Leopardians are behind us. In other words: there is a lot to work on and it is better not to make claims. The new Roma stadium, which according to the plans of the club and the Municipality should be built in Pietralata, remains a point of reference for the new administration, but there are evident slowdowns, starting with the approval by the council of the public interest, indispensable for the opening of the Services Conference.

THE BRAKING

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It is no coincidence that Mayor Roberto Gualtieri shows cautious optimism. “We are working to have the House vote after Easter, as soon as possible. The goal is to close in April”. And not in March, as hoped. That there are difficulties, underlines the president of the Sport Commission, Ferdinando Bonessio, who yesterday questioned the totem date of 2027, that is the one in which the Giallorossi club will turn one hundred and would like to play its first match in the new facility. “For such a complicated proposal, in which six commissions (Urban Planning, Sport, Public Works, Mobility, Environment and Heritage) are called to express themselves, there is particular attention and all the problems in terms of impact on the territory are being examined. If we obtain a Mr. project, which satisfies everyone and which can reassure committees and associations that are against it at the moment, rather than thinking of playing the first game in 2027 for the centenary of Roma, but perhaps celebrating it with the laying of the first stone, in my opinion We would have done a great job anyway.” Which, however, would mean completing the stadium no earlier than 2029, to be optimistic. The city councilor for urban planning also spoke about the stadium in these hours, explaining: “The stadium is the symbol of the new idea we have of the city, the one that abandons projects in which new soil is consumed, preferring the construction of something important inside the city. Obviously this brings about different problems, because an important and heavy infrastructure is grafted into a city that has its own complexity and problems”. And to those who ask him if he would bet one or a thousand euros on his achievement, he replies: “I usually don’t bet, but I think it can be done. It’s as if I were saying to you: if you participate in the New York marathon, it’s easier to bet that you will win or lose? Obviously the second. Because it’s easier to bet on a defeat in difficult matches, but which must still be fought and played. It’s a good project, it’s within the idea of ​​a city we have. Roma must resolve the many issues poste, because our offices have neither the superficiality to say that everything is going well nor the rigidity to say that everything is going badly. The conditions for doing so are there”.

PROBLEMS

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Roma, as is well known, presented a feasibility study for the construction and management of the stadium in project financing on an area of ​​the Municipality (in which, however, there would be some private parcels) asking for the surface right for ninety years. The total cost amounts to approximately 528 million and the expected capacity of the arena ranges from 55,000 to 62,000 spectators. In addition to the stadium, the club plans to build accommodation and entertainment facilities, car parks, green areas open to the public and urbanization works, aimed at improving access to the facility, for a value of approximately twenty million. If the crux of the expropriations still to be completed can be overcome with the club assuming the ancillary expenses that will emerge, mobility is the most thorny issue. The proximity of the facility to the Pertini hospital could create access difficulties on matchdays and for this very reason privileged lanes are being thought of that lead only to the hospital, without prejudice to the basic idea of ​​the whole project, that is, that at least fifty percent of the spectators flow into the stadium using public transport, thanks above all to the four underground stops nearby. But the difficulties are not lacking, because it is feared that the planned parking spaces will become an attractive factor for traffic even during normal days and that the same green areas foreseen in a stadium, conceived in effect as “green”, will not satisfy the residents, some of the which have already organized themselves into committees opposing the project. Moral: there is no shortage of difficulties and the postponement of the indicative date of the first enthusiasms, 2027, really seems to be the least of the problems. But the feeling between Rome and the Municipality resists, and this bodes well.