The Europa-Park Stadion, also known as the Mooswaldstadion () by fans, is a football stadium in Freiburg, Germany. It primarily serves as the home stadium of SC Freiburg, replacing the club's former home, the Dreisamstadion. It is located in a part of the city called Brühl, immediately to the west of Freiburg Airport.
Stadium characteristics
According to the building plans made by Düsseldorf-based architect group, HPP Architekten, the stadium will have continuous upper and lower tiers, with the home stand behind the goal on the south side. The plans say it will have a capacity of 34,700 seats, 36% (around 12,400) of them being standing only. The stadium is 25 metres high and is rectangular. In addition to the offices, function rooms for the first team and the U23s will be integrated.
History
The stadium used by SC Freiburg up until now, the Dreisamstadion, opened in 1954, no longer meets the requirements of a modern stadium due to a pitch that is too small (100.5 m × 68 m), and also a gradient of 98 cm from the goal in the south to the goal in the north towards the Dreisam. It is only allowed to be continuously used because of a special permit issued by the DFL. For some time now, there have been discussions about a rebuilding of the stadium or a new construction. In order to examine the economic viability of converting the Dreisamstadion, the club commissioned a study from Freyler, according to which a conversion would take eleven years and cost only slightly less than a new building.
The Freiburg local councils ordered an assessment report from the auditing company Ernst & Young in the spring of 2012. The report described a conversion time of only three years but calculated far superior costs. According to the report, there was no viable solution on the old site. This led to the assessment and comparison of further locations. In December 2012, the Freiburg city council voted in favour of the construction of a new stadium and confirmed the assessment of three possible locations. The joint task force of club and city agreed on the Wolfswinkel location next to the airfield and the university engineering faculty building in the district of Brühl. The advantages of the site are the good transport connections and the possibility to set up training grounds in the surrounding area. With the exception of 200 m2 which belong to the university, the site belongs to the city. The Hettlinger allotment gardens near the Messe in the western part of Freiburg and the Hirschmatten plot of land near the motorway feeder road, which had been taken into consideration as possible alternative construction sites for the stadium, were deemed less suitable in a decision by the Freiburg city council on 25 January 2014.
On 1 February 2015, the residents of Freiburg voted in favour of the construction of the new stadium in Wolkswinkel with 58.2 percent of the votes. The budget amounts to €76 million. The club obtained the building permit for the construction of a new stadium on the Wolfswinkel site on 16 November 2018. The same month, preparatory construction work started.
The stadium was initially scheduled to be completed in August 2020 with the beginning of the 2020–21 season. In April 2020, SC CFO Oliver Leki disclosed in an interview with Kicker, a German sports magazine, that this original date would not be met due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. For this reason the Dreisamstadion was specified as a venue in addition to the SC-Stadion for club licensing in the 2020–21 season. In July 2020, it was publicly announced that the stadium would probably not be ready until the end of 2020 and that the Sport-Club could possibly move to the new stadium after the winter break. Freiburg finally moved into the new stadium after playing the first three home games of the 2021–22 season in their old stadium, their first game in the stadium being against RB Leipzig.
At the end of 2019, the foot and bike path bridge over the new access road to the stadium (Suwonallee) on Granadaallee was opened. The remaining construction work is going according to schedule, but there is no time buffer anymore.
The construction of the roof structure began in early 2020. To ensure that everyday traffic would not be disturbed, all of the roof elements were transported to Freiburg at night by heavy load transport. On 5 March 2020, the topping out ceremony was held on the site. The SC team then made a quick tour of the construction site.