History
The original building was designed and conceived by Mario Recordón in 1956 with the name "Metropolitan Indoor Stadium" to be the seat of the 1958 World Basketball Championship. However, funding was redirected to remodeling the National Stadium, with a view to achieving the 1962 World Cup. The roofed stadium was left in total neglect.
During the term of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle it was decided to complete it. The work was financed by Hiller Investments, which received a grant from the Ministry of Public Works with a 20-year lease.
Arena Santiago was symbolically opened on March 7, 2006 by then President Ricardo Lagos, and it was inaugurated on April 15 that year by his successor, Michelle Bachelet.
In 2008, managers signed a contract with portable phone company Movistar Chile for 16 years.
Read more about this topic: Movistar Arena
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
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“I cannot be much pleased without an appearance of truth; at least of possibility—I wish the history to be natural though the sentiments are refined; and the characters to be probable, though their behaviour is excelling.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)