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AC Milan’s new stadium plan is … different (Video)

By Phil Watson

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AC Milan unveiled initial plans for a new 48,000-seat stadium it wants to open in 2018 and the design is certainly not something ordinary.

AC Milan has played at storied San Siro in the Italian city since 1926 and has shared the facility with rival Inter Milan since 1947 after the club sold the stadium to the city of Milan.

Earlier this month, AC Milan announced plans to develop a new stadium in the urban section of the city known as Portello, a redevelopment that will include a hotel, sports college and restaurants and will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $370 million, according to The Daily Mail.

Here’s a video showing a model of the new stadium and what you will notice is that it won’t exactly stand out from the surrounding urban landscape.

The stadium will be only 100 feet high—half the height of San Siro—and will be built 30 feet into the ground to keep the profile lower.

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Arup designed the stadium—also the firm responsible for Beijing’s famous Bird Nest for the 2008 Olympic Games—and the stadium, at its heart, will be a stadium. That is to say there will be a pitch, seats for fans and all that jazz.

But it will be surrounded by a perimeter that will include the aforementioned eateries, sports college and hotel. From the street, it won’t be easy to distinguish the stadium from a mall.

That is something that may not sit well with some fans, but it’s brilliant at its root.

Think about it—land for stadiums in downtown areas of the U.S. is hard to come by, so imagine that problem in a part of the world where the city centers are a 1,000 years or more older than those in this country.

So building something that blends into the surrounding architecture is just plain old neighborly.

And despite what some might think (and, yes, we’re looking at you, Jerry Jones), not every stadium has to be a gigantic monolith that looks like it just landed with the first aliens on board who want to invade Earth and eat our livers.

The new stadium would be 2½ miles from San Siro and AC Milan officials said they want a stadium that will be accessible by public transportation—something that actually exists in Europe—in an effort to cut down traffic.

Surrounding green areas would be open to the public year-round and the venue would include soundproofing materials to keep the noise of the match inside.

The plan is expected to be finalized next month.

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