On December 5, the Zug City Council approved the Herti Ice Stadium development plan at second reading. A further step towards the expansion of the arena has thus been taken and the political authorities are to be thanked. The EVZ itself is working intensively on the project for the building application. The submission of this building application is planned shortly after the development plan becomes legally valid.
The «Keep Building» expansion concept developed by the studiomatt architectural firm allows the arena to be expanded while the stadium remains open. However, there will be certain restrictions during the implementation phase, including the need to close off individual rows of seats during certain phases for safety reasons.
The EVZ plans to build around 600 additional seats for the coming season by means of three measures. These will initially only be offered for individual sale. Later, during the realization of the planned stadium extension «Keep Building», they will serve as a reserve, as certain seating areas will have to be temporarily closed during construction. A new media stand will also be built.
600 MORE SEATS IN THE SHORT TERM
To ensure that all long-standing fans and season ticket holders can continue to attend games during these phases, the EVZ has already developed a solution that provides for three structural measures:
1) With the LED ice hockey boards installed last year, EVZ has created the initial situation where two additional complete rows of seats can be installed directly around the pitch. This extension of the stands will also be implemented in the standing area for home fans. At the same time, some of the standing areas on the long sides will be converted into seats. The capacity of the home standing area will therefore remain unchanged, but more standing-room fans will be able to watch the game from behind the goal.
2) The axial dimension of the seating in the BOSSARD Arena varies between 50-55cm in the main stands and is therefore more generous than average compared to many other stadiums. In various sectors with the largest spacing today, the seats will be condensed to 50cm. This will also allow some additional seats to be installed.
3) A new media zone will be created on the south side of the arena above the boxes. Once the media seats and the new media room have been created, the writing press and radio stations will move to the arena side. The space this frees up on the north side will be used for additional seating. The «change of sides» for the majority of media professionals is planned for the 2024/25 season.
These three measures will create around 600 additional seats in the short term. These measures were already part of the «Keep Building» expansion project and can be implemented independently of the development plan. A corresponding building application has been submitted for this conversion work.
This early implementation means that the expected bottlenecks in the seating areas during future construction phases can be avoided. «We always want to have space for all our long-standing season ticket holders, even during the extension work,» explains EVZ CEO Patrick Lengwiler. It is therefore essential to increase the seating capacity now in order to offer alternative options later. For this reason, no season tickets or reallocations will be offered for the additional seats created; instead, they will initially go on open individual sale.
The EVZ will continue to provide open information about the stadium expansion project. All information on the further procedure and the «Keep Building» project can be found on the website www.keepbuilding.ch.
