Sirmione’s New Sports Center Sparks Local Opposition and Debate

Finally, Sirmione will have its own Sports Center, the first in its history. For a tourist town with over 6,000 residents – rising to 20,000 during the tourist season – this is an unaffordable milestone. While other towns, undoubtedly less affluent and without the massive turnover that drives the holiday industry, have established their own sports facilities for decades (Pozzolengo, Solferino, Padenghe are some examples), Sirmione has remained stagnant for too long.

Now the time for redemption has arrived, but the idea is meeting some significant opposition, namely from the sport enthusiasts and football players directly involved. The project, as designed and presented to associations and football clubs, is not at all appreciated. The club presidents, convened Tuesday morning at 11 a.m., just hours before the City Council would have been called to approve the plan, do not want to hear about this project. They do not like it; at least, that is what Nello Sandri, president of Us Sirmione, which has 250 kids playing football, claims to Bresciaoggi.

Opposition and project details

But let’s proceed in order. The other evening, with the abstention of the opposition parties, the zoning plan for Cà Nova was approved—a large tourist village to be built in Lugana, behind Via Tintoretto. A natural question arises: what does a private zoning plan have to do with the sports center? Quite a lot, actually. Because the administrators of Società Lugana-Iris, based in Conca di Roana, Vicenza province, will build the sports center in exchange for the go-ahead to develop the hospitality structure.

All this without the Municipality of Sirmione needing to spend a single euro. Construction is expected to start around March of next year and, according to the specifications, must be completed within 18 months, meaning by September 2003. Otherwise, the company will be required to pay a penalty of 2 billion lire, secured by a bond to be paid soon as a guarantee.

Overall, the combined residential and sports facilities are projected to generate approximately 30 billion lire in business. The area had already been outlined in the old Master Plan of 1982, later confirmed in the new P.U.G. approved mid-December last year by the Lombardy Region.

The sports center project aims explicitly to consolidate existing sports facilities scattered across the municipal territory: in particular, the football fields in via Bagner and via Coorti Romane. The Lugana structure will feature a football pitch of 65 by 105 meters with a dirt surface, a second field of 40 by 60 meters in synthetic grass, and a third of 65 by 107 meters in natural grass. There will also be various sports equipment, lighting systems, prefabricated stands with underground locker rooms; finally, a multifunctional building of around 200 square meters.

In total, over 44,000 square meters of surface area, in addition to the 9,500 for pedestrian pathways and parking, and 3,500 for roads. But, as mentioned, sports associations, according to Sandri, would not agree. “The two fields are not close together, which causes inconvenience and inefficiencies. And then, it’s not acceptable to gather us on the morning of the same day that the project was scheduled for approval: what were they calling us to do?”

What do they propose? “That the project be modified, solely in the interest of the athletes,” concludes Sandri. Meanwhile, the old fields in via Bagner will probably be decommissioned to make way for a large parking lot serving tourists and residents, in an area of more recent urban development.

This option raises some concerns: why were hundreds of millions spent to refurbish the field and locker rooms, when the construction of the new Lugana sports center was foreseeable?