Future
The club issued an international tender to remodel the stadium as a celebration of the stadium's fiftieth anniversary. The objective was to make the facility an integrated and highly visible urban environment. The club sought to increase the seating capacity by 13,500, with at least half of the total seating to be under cover. The intention was to make it the fourth largest stadium in the world (in terms of seating capacity), after the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the USA (297,000 capacity), the Rungrado May Day Stadium in North Korea (150,000 capacity) and the Salt Lake Stadium in India (120,000 capacity).
On 18 September 2007 the British architect Norman Foster and his company were selected to "restructure" Camp Nou. With an estimated cost of €250 million, the plan included the addition of 10,000 seats for a maximum capacity of 106,000. The FC Barcelona board approved the sale of their former training ground (the Mini Estadi) in order to finance the remodeling. The project was planned to begin in 2009 and to be finished for the 2011–12 season. However, due to the 2008 financial crises and subsequent fall in real estate prices, the sale of the training ground was postponed and likewise the remodeling project. In May 2010 Sandro Rosell, then a candidate for president of FC Barcelona, dismissed the possibility of selling the Mini Estadi, saying it would be indefensible to “sell the crown jewels”, and his election on 30 June 2010 effectively halted the plan to remodel Camp Nou.
Read more about this topic: Camp Nou
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
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“It has no future but itself—
Its infinite contain
Its past—enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
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—Simone Weil (1909–1943)