The big business that football teams are aiming for, as we know, is own a stadium. Also because, thanks to the compliant Italian legislation, in addition to the stadium, commercial services can be created, more or less linked to the football business. From this perspective we must read the renovation of the Meazza stadium in Milan, where the two Milanese teams, Inter and Milan, play. The Meazza affair has dragged on for years and seems not yet over. But the football clubs are kicking on (sorry for the pun) and trying to equip themselves outside the city walls. It’s a shame that obviously the lands where they plan to build the stadiums are green areaswhich would be completely concreted and asphalted.
For Inter it is land in the municipality of Rozzano (La Gazzetta dello Sport he pleasantly defines it as an “abandoned space”!). For Milan, land in the municipality of San Donato Milanese. But if the first project is still underway, the second already seems well underway, and here I would like to go into more detail because it is a classic Italian story.
The land concerned has always been cultivated until a few years ago and in fact the denomination is Cascina San Francesco, and extends for approximately twenty-nine hectares, enclosed between the railway and the ring road. With inside too a wet area of approximately 8000 square metres, already reported in 2021 by the WWF to the municipal administration. Beyond the ring road extends the Southern Milan Agricultural Park. It was to be built precisely in the area identified by the football club Sportlifeciyan ambitious project conceived by a limited company with the same name in 2017: “We want to create a district with four areas dedicated to Sport, Health, Education and Leisure, with the aim of integrating traditional sports with E-Sports and Technology”.
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The area was suitable in the sense that already in the 90s (left-wing council) it was made suitable for building with tertiary use, while with the Pd council preceding the current one its destination was changed to sports, adhering to the wishes of the proponents of the sports citadel. Furthermore, no agreement was signed between the LLC and the Municipality. And in any case with the current council it seemed that the project could not materialize as the future mayor declared in a public meeting in May 2022, during the electoral campaign, organized by GreenSando and WWF South Milan, which would have defended all the soil “permeable to date”. But here in the spring of 2023 the news appears in the newspapers that the mayor Squire he would be enthusiastic about AC Milan’s proposal to build the new stadium on those grounds. And on 8 June 2023, Milan continues the work and purchases 90% of SportLifeCity srl
All this does not go unnoticed by the citizens of San Donato, and in particular by the association GreenSando, which already in 2020 had presented a petition to the European Parliament for the defense of the soil in San Donato and in the south-east area of Milan, a petition which is still ongoing, and which obviously now integrates the problem of the stadium. In June last year, a special one was created in the Municipality No Committee at the Stadium in which only individual citizens come together, even if they belong to various associations or political formations. The committee organizes a series of activities and public meetings, and soon collects over 3000 protest signatures.
The reasons for the opposition – in my opinion – are more than valid. There prima is that it was a commitment from the new mayor not to waterproof new areas. There second is that to build the stadium and all the connected services, especially access roads and car parks, approximately 54 hectares would be needed: 29 of the former Sportlifecity area, plus 18 of the South Agricultural Park, plus 7 of road works. There third it is the influx of tens of thousands of fans for each match, creating traffic, parking and pollution problems, all highly concentrated on certain days: sporting events would end up heavily influencing city life. The fourth is landscape and opportunity: the stadium would be built a short distance from the Chiaravalle Abbey, a historic place of worship and peace. In this regard the granddaughter of Enrico Mattei he wrote in recent days to Cardinal Delpini of Milan, but above all to Paolo Scaroni, president of Milan, asking him to withdraw from the intention of building in that very place. And the monks themselves are obviously worried about the project.
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On a side note, but not much, it is worth underlining that San Donato already risks losing other green areas. There is the For instance, nine hectares of previously agricultural land – obviously now made suitable for building – in the city centre. Connected to Pratone there is De Gasperi Ovest, a similar area of another nine hectares, of lesser environmental value, on which however a spontaneous forest has grown. Then there is the area of Monticello where there was talk of a new neighborhood that would have to be built on corn fields covering an area of six/seven hectares. And other minor interventions are planned. In short, the choice of San Donato Milanese as the location for a stadium has many problems, and is not as simple and straightforward as the sports newspapers especially want to present it to us. Meanwhile, the renovation of the Meazza stadium has become topical again in recent days without interrupting the sporting activities inside. A bit like what happened with Santiago Bernabeu of Madrid. The Milanese administration was supported by Webuild, which now has a monopoly on large works in Italy.
Maybe nothing will happen to the San Donato stadium. But then, the question is: what will happen to that area?
2024-03-15 08:30:51
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