Stadium plans in Graz

“Renovation is not enough – we are rethinking Liebenau!”

The Merkur Arena is being extensively remodeled.(Bild: Sepp Pail)

At the beginning of October, the Graz city government announced plans for a large-scale renovation of the stadium in Liebenau - on Saturday (17), Sturm and GAK, who are to share a modern arena in the future, will face each other in the Graz soccer derby. The "Krone" spoke to Sturm vice president and construction expert Peter Schaller in advance about the stadium plans.

"Krone": As a construction and planning professional, you are Sturm's greatest infrastructure expert and therefore also on the committee for the feasibility study for a new arena in Liebenau - what experience do you have in stadium construction?
Peter Schaller: I took over the Klagenfurt stadium before the European Championships while it was being completed. It had to be ready in 2007. At that time, there was a cooperation with a Chinese company regarding the upper tier, which was to be dismantled and reused for the Olympic Games. At the end of the day, it would have been negligent to install the Chinese steel parts. We had to get a replacement finished. It was a race against time in two and a half months. Our people only left the construction site two hours before the scheduled test match between Austria and Japan. Fortunately, in retrospect, the stadium was not dismantled (laughs).