BENGALURU: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has given the green signal to a 80,000-seat stadium to be built by the Karnataka Housing Board (KHB) in Bommasandra at an estimated cost of Rs 1,650 crore.
As per sources from the housing department, the world-class stadium will be fully funded by the board itself. Apart from hosting cricket matches, it will include eight indoor and eight outdoor sport facilities, state-of-the-art gyms, training centres, swimming pools, guest houses, hostels, three-star and five-star hotels, and a convention hall for international events.
The project received the CM’s nod on Friday night after officials from the housing department, along with the housing minister, shared the project details.
“The department has already acquired 4,000 acres in Surya City for housing projects. For now, 53 acres have already been identified for the sport complex. The board is in the process of finalising a deal for another 22 acres from private players. Apart from a few monetary shares of benefits from the project, sites in developed layouts will be given as compensation,” said a senior official with the board.
“The project, once started, will be completed in three years,” said the officer who presented the proposal to the CM along with the minister.
It is said that once completed, the complex will be the second-largest cricket stadium in the country after Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium, which has a seating capacity of 1,32,000.
It is believed that the stampede at Chinnaswamy Stadium on June 4 which claimed 11 lives prompted the government to come up with the proposal ro set up a second stadium in Bengaluru.