Nearly 16 years later, the workers and construction materials return to the plot of the new Valencia CF stadium located on Avenida de las Cortes Valencianas. Specifically, it was on February 25, 2009 when, due to lack of financial resources, some works were paralyzed and finally resumed this Friday.
A day before, this Thursday, several workers from Fomento de Construcciones y Contratas (FCC) began to gather materials and adapt the perimeter fencing of the plot as well as the accesses, as elDiario.es verified in situ. During the morning, a delegation from the club led by the president, Layhonn Chan, visited the concrete skeleton. Thus, work is scheduled to officially restart this Friday. According to the schedule presented by the club, preliminary work will be carried out on the exterior until May, while the start of the architectural works inside the stadium is scheduled for May 21, the assembly of the roof for the December 29, 2026, its conclusion in April 2027 and the completion of all works by July 11, 2027.
Although Valencia CF had planned to make an official presentation of the project weeks ago, it was finally decided to hold a private event this Friday without the presence of the media, who will be sent informative and graphic content, but without the possibility of ask questions at a press conference. A situation that contrasts with the pageantry of the presentation of the model of the initial project, in November 2006, with the deceased former mayor Rita Barberá and the former president Francisco Camps accompanying the then largest shareholder of the club, the promoter Juan Soler.
This information blackout only fuels doubts about various aspects of the latest project from Mark Fenwick’s office presented to the Valencia City Council last October and revealed by elDiario.es. The most relevant is, without a doubt, the final cost of the works that remain to be carried out, a fact that is not clear in the aforementioned project as it leaves aspects such as, among others, the final design of the roof unspecified. An aspect that, on the other hand, shows the ineffectiveness of the cost audit commissioned by the Valencia City Council on a project that is clearly incomplete.
On December 19, after the failed shareholders meeting, the president Layhoon Chan and the financial director, Inma Ibáñez, acknowledged that they had not yet closed the final budget, something that they were negotiating with FCC, with whom they finally reached an agreement that they announced on January 5th. In the same appearance, Chan, right-hand man of the largest shareholder, Peter Lim, confirmed for the first time that the Singapore tycoon is open to listening to offers for his share package: “If there is an offer it will depend on what the offer is. If it is an attractive offer, he will surely study it,” he said.
Thus, with Lim thinking about his departure, it was also announced that the club is working on a line of credit with Goldman Sachs of a maximum of 325 million euros that will be used entirely to finance the cost of the works. Something certainly shocking when the current largest shareholder is thinking about selling and leaving the club. Although it has not yet been announced how much the final amount of the credit will be, Ibáñez commented that they estimate that the final credit will be around 160 million, that is, half of the ceiling of 325. To these would be added the 80 of CVC that the club, also exclusively to finance the works, so the final cost could be between 240 and 275 million if the 35 agreed with Atitlan for the tertiary plot.
The Últimes Vesprades collective requests that the construction license be revoked
On December 2, at a round table that took place at the College of Architects of Valencia on December 2, several architects and engineers denounced deficiencies in the project presented by Valencia CF to the City Council and advocated for the rehabilitation of Mestalla. The event was organized by the collective Últimes Vesprades a Mestalla.
Based on these same deficiencies, the platform requested this Thursday in writing before the Valencia City Council, the Ombudsman and the Ombudsman for the expiration of the works license for not meeting the requirement of presenting a complete execution project. required by the City Council. For this reason, they demanded that immediate measures be adopted to avoid the start of the works and a technical statement by the City Council on the validity of the project presented, as well as the audit in charge of determining the total cost of the stadium, given that it has been demonstrated that The project budget presented does not correspond to the reality of the work.
Among the deficiencies, the group highlighted that “the project is presented as a preliminary edition that may be the subject of successive development editions, something incompatible with the legal definition of an Execution Project.” Furthermore, they recalled that “repealed regulations are used in some of their calculations, such as in relation to the structure of the stadium and the sizing of the solar photovoltaic installation” and that “it lacks essential documents, such as a durability study of the existing structure, its adaptation to current regulations or the monitoring reports referred to in the project report itself.”
As El Confidencial recently reported, after the event organized at the College of Architects, Valencia CF, through the architecture firm Fenwick Iribarren, has awarded the calculation of the structure of the new Mestalla to the company MC2 with the aim of knowing the state real and the cost of adapting the concrete structure that has been outdoors for 16 years.
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