Tokyo 2020 Eyes Low-Cost Solution for Olympic Stadium

(ATR) Organizers of the Tokyo Olympics tell Around the Rings they are examining government guidelines for the new stadium issued Friday.

The guidelines are centered on keeping costs down, building an "athletes-first" stadium and ensuring a sustainable legacy. They were published amid intense scrutiny of the project after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe axed the original venue plan due to ballooning costs.

The Japanese government has set a March 2020 deadline for its completion – one year later than planned and just four months before the Games open.

"Tokyo 2020 is aware that the national government released today guidelines for the new National Stadium," an organizing committee spokesman told ATR.

"The organizing committee will look into these guidelines and continue working closely with all the relevant stakeholders."

The Zaha Hadid-designed stadium that was scrapped in July had nearly doubled in cost to $2.5 billion. The government today did not include any budget for the new stadium or put a cap on how much would be invested in it.

It will be designed as a multipurpose facility that can host rugby, athletics and soccer.

"We should make a structure that will emotionally move people all over the world," prime minister Abe was quoted by Reuters.

"Of course, keeping costs down is a priority, and we must make the best, realistic plan we can."

Financial figures are set to be released in a few weeks time.

A portion of the 80,000 seats will be temporary; London 2012’s Olympic stadium offered a similar sustainable legacy solution. The government confirmed that control of the stadium would be handed over to a private venue management company post-Games.

IOC vice president John Coates told ATR this week that he will visit Japan in the next week or so to provide guidance with tendering a new national stadium for Tokyo 2020.

Coates said the aim was to tender a design by the end of this year. The organizing committee wants to begin construction in the first quarter of 2016, an ambitious timetable for a showpiece Olympic venue.

Olympics minister Toshiaki Endo heads the panel responsible for coming up with a venue to be built on the site of the 1964 Olympic Stadium.

The government guidelines surfaced just four days after Abe apologized to the Japanese people for wasting millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on the abandoned Olympic Stadium project.

President Thomas Bach said last week that the IOC was stepping in to help with the design tender to ensure all Olympic requirements were taken into consideration "and there are no surprises in a year or half a year neither for the government or IOC."

Reported by Mark Bisson

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