Culture and sports centre “Daugava Stadium”, in cooperation with the Transport Department of Riga City Council, with the co-financing of EU Funds, is implementing a large-scale project in Grīziņkalns - reconstruction of Daugava Stadium, in order to promote the active involvement of the population of this neighbourhood and other Riga neighbourhoods situated nearby in culture and sports activities, as well as to facilitate the growth of entrepreneurial activity.
Within the scope of the first stage of reconstruction of Daugava Stadium, the Western tribune and its interior premises in an area of almost 5,000 m2 have been fully renovated. The new layout of the premises includes athletes’ locker rooms, several sports and dance halls, fitness hall, physical therapy and medical offices doping control premises, conference and exhibition halls, recreation area, VIP premises and media centre. Well-planned functionality of interior premises allows a high-quality training process and organise track and field and football competitions to be ensured on an international scale, but also the concurrent use of the premises for the needs of various types of sports and culture events on an everyday basis.
Along with constructing the new Southern and Northern tribunes, the number of audience seats was increased to 10,461 instead of the previous 5,560 seats, thus ensuring the possibility for a two times bigger circle of spectators to view the Latvian Nationwide Song and Dance Festival held in July this year. The above surface construction of the new tribunes enables the visitors to freely move under the tribunes, considerably facilitating the pace of cultural and sports events. For the first time in the history of Daugava Stadium a lift has been constructed, easing the movement possibilities for people with movement disorders and mothers with baby carriages.
During the second stage of the project the ice hall was built, where the participants of the 2021 Ice-Hockey World Championship led their first training sessions. Daugava ice hall is intended for ensuring ice hockey, figure skating, short-track and curling training processes and competitions, cultural events, inter alia, for the participants of the Song and Dance Festival. Ice hall has two ice rinks, one of which is intended as a national ice hockey team training site, and the second one - for skating of various disciplines. There are athletes’ locker rooms and tribunes on the second-floor level located between both rinks. Cafe premises and a fitness hall are also located on the second floor of the hall.
During the further stages of project development, it is planned to construct the track and field platform with multifunctionality, reconstruct the central sport field, track and field and football training sites, as well as to carry out territorial improvement works. Development of private investment objects is also planned in the territory of Daugava Stadium.
The total project financing comprises EUR 67,560,868.06, inter alia, financing of the European Regional Development Fund of EUR 39,931,548.49.
