The stadium at Lužánky is to be completed in 2012

Brno - The reconstruction of the dilapidated Brno football stadium at Lužánky will begin next year, and the arena with a capacity of 30,000 spectators is to be ready for 1. FC Brno by 2012. The construction, which should meet the standards of UEFA and FIFA, will cost 1.9 billion crowns. Half will be paid by the city of Brno, and the other half will be requested from the state. City representatives and the design office told this to journalists today.
     "This is not just about a city stadium, but a national one, and for this reason we will be requesting the Ministry of Education for the necessary financial resources," said the mayor of Brno, Roman Onderka. However, the ministry has not yet allocated funds; it wants to see a specific project. "Until a project is presented, no financial commitment from the state can be discussed at all," said ministry spokesperson Kateřina Böhmová.
     Brno's first league footballers have been playing in recent years at the stadium on Srbská. The Lužánky area, where the then Zbrojovka Brno won the title nearly 30 years ago and which holds the attendance record in the Czech league, did not meet the requirements. The stadium is in overall poor condition.
     Its future design is being prepared by a team led by the well-known Brno architect Petr Hrůša. "We aimed for simplicity, it shouldn't be anything ostentatious, it will be a precise oval," Hrůša described the construction. The first phase of the project will be delivered to the municipality by the end of the summer, and by the end of the year, a public tender for a construction company should be announced. "If the stadium is truly completed within three years, we want to play in the Champions League there," say the Brno footballers on their website.