«The new stadium is to be built in Sant'Elia. Moving it means not doing it." Paolo Truzzu opened the session of the municipal council with a message that clarifies the position of the Municipality of Cagliari on the project for the future plant and on the intentions of the Region to transfer everything to Su Stangioni, including the Fair. " In the area of the current plants we will build a hospital", they let the Region know.
An institutional clash therefore emerges between the two government buildings, regional and capital.
"Behind the choice of the stadium in Sant'Elia there is the work of many people", began the mayor, "a long process that involved two administrations of different colors: one of the centre-left and one of the centre-right. Both in the municipality and in the Region. Meetings, proceedings, service conferences, economic and environmental evaluations. Decisions and administrative acts that have always seen the full involvement of the regional offices". As if to say: we've always worked together, Villa Devoto's breakaway breaks the balance.
Truzzu cites «the work of two municipal councils, which have expressed themselves several times, without doubts, on the location of the stadium in Sant'Elia. And of which, as mayor, I defend the competences and prerogatives, because it is the municipal council that decides the urban planning, which decides where to locate the public works». Also passing on the «decision, in my opinion wise, of all the actors, to give up on a new shopping centre. The need, requested by the FIGC, to move from a stadium of 20,000 seats to one of 30,000».
In addition there is the commitment of the club, " Cagliari Calcio, which has been authorized, again by this municipal council, to present a project financing and in recent years has spent time and money to implement a project on the basis of the indications of the municipality and region".
This is why, according to the mayor, "the stadium must be built in Sant'Elia". Time is running out: not giving the green light means missing the train of funds that could arrive with the Europeans.
Furthermore, everyone only talks about the plant, as an infrastructure. But « the new stadium is also part of a neighborhood regeneration project that would reconnect to the city, which would finally take on a new life, becoming a large sustainable, sporting, cultural and social hub, experienced every day and not once every two weeks. Able to provide opportunities for growth and development to the whole city».
Truzzu underlines that he has not seen Su Stangioni's alternative project, which should cost 70 million. But he believes that "no cost assessment has been made, as well as the timing, of the expropriation of private land, of huge urbanization works, of roads and parking lots to be built, of the costs of reclaiming the area, of those for mitigating the hydrogeological risk, of the public transport system to be organised. At least 300 million are needed, say the technicians, with a planning time of at least 5/6 years. To which are added at least 3 years of construction».
However, the money is needed: «50 million to be spread over three years», the mayor underlined in the courtroom, «which is available to the Region. We are ready to think about times and ways because we have always made loyal institutional collaboration the guideline to inspire our behavior and our choices. But changing location means not making the stadium. With the concrete risk of doing nothing, certain of paying the high political price of a missed opportunity».
Meanwhile, a first reply arrives shortly from the Region: «A new hospital must be built in Sant'Elia», they say from Villa Devoto, «which will bring together Brotzu and Oncologico. It will also serve to restore vitality to the entire neighborhood every day, not just twenty days a year".
