It will have a capacity of 70 thousand seats and also other functions, including club museum, hotel, entertainment and commercial facilities
27 September – MILAN
While waiting for the concrete one – and here with the projections we are around October 2025 – Milan lays the first, large stone for its new stadium in bureaucratic terms. After months of technical meetings and feasibility studies, the Rossoneri club presented to the Municipality of San Donato Milanese the proposal for the urban planning variant necessary to continue with the project developed in the San Francesco area. A formal act which in practice puts the club’s intentions in black and white and passes the ball between the feet of the municipality of the first Milanese belt.
An act made possible – also – by the acquisition last June of SportLifeCity, the company that owns the land. From this point of view, the essential part of this first phase is one, in particular: SportLifeCity had already obtained the authorizations to allocate the San Francesco area to the construction of a sports area with approximately 20 thousand seats. Therefore, the intended use does not change, nor does the building area involved. Concrete, in simple words: 108 thousand square meters (as they were and remain as they are) nestled between the beginning of Milan’s eastern ring road and the junction that allows those arriving from the A1 motorway to enter the city. Instead, the overall area of the intervention would grow: from 300 thousand to 460 thousand square metres, “overflowing” in some areas – looking at the map from above – to the left of the motorway junction. But these would be interventions of an environmental sustainability nature.
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It is what Milan calls the “new gateway to Milan”, in the strong sign of sustainability (various improvement interventions are planned for the use of the green areas of the South Park, with usable greenery that would increase from the 80 thousand square meters of the previous proposal to around 235 thousand) and also visibility, since the future Rossoneri facility would be the first large structure that those arriving in the city from the south would encounter. From via Aldo Rossi they are keen to point out that this is only the beginning of the journey, but at the same time they underline the “intense work with consultants and significant amounts of money used, for an in-depth evaluation”. Words from president Paolo Scaroni, who took stock of the situation alongside Tim Romani, former president of Caa Icon and project leader of this project, and his close collaborator Nicholas Gancikoff. Introduction: we have not yet reached the point of talking about the external appearance of the facility (in the rendering the shape of the stadium is “neutral”), nor about the possible naming, but several characteristics of the project, managed by Studio Manica, have been clarified. And therefore: 70,000 seat stadium with deeper bleachers and more generous seats, also suitable for events, concerts and other sports (American football, rugby). Close to the facility is the new Casa Milan, the store and museum, a hotel and an entertainment center, in line with the guidelines of Gerry Cardinale, who with Romani has already worked on several other facilities in the USA. In terms of traffic, new junctions are planned both in the north and south directions, pedestrian bridges to connect San Donato to the South Park, the strengthening of the railway line, with the station located right overlooking the San Francesco area.
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The next steps? Within the next two months the Municipality of San Donato will examine the proposal in detail and then present it to the Region, which will intervene in the urban planning variant and continue the dialogue with Milan. The timing imagined by the club: project approved in spring 2025 at the latest, work starting in October of the same year, Milan on the pitch in the new facility starting from the 2028-29 season. The strengths imagined by the club would also concern the impact on the territory, with the east-west connection from San Donato towards the Chiaravalle Abbey, the usability and services for the South Park (by the way, the dialogue with the institution has yet to start, but its board of directors voted on a motion expressing a negative opinion on any requests for the construction of facilities). Milan also strongly underlines what is not foreseen by the project: no “above ground” construction in the South Park, no shopping centre, no car flow or parking in the Chiaravalle area or the town of San Donato. “We have been working intensely on this area for a year – explains Scaroni -, and it seems like an easy variant to us. Is San Siro a completely closed chapter? He’s not dead, but he’s further away. Let’s say that if Sala managed to remove the constraint, it would regain strength…”. Tim Romani says he is confident: “For me it will be the last project, I’m here because we will do it. The project will be completed.”
September 27, 2023 (modified September 27, 2023 | 5:08 pm)
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