ENGAGING SECOND PHASE
By December 2020 the 17-year old Bukit Jalil complex will be reinvented as Kuala Lumpur Sports City. Upon completion, the sports city aims to create a vibrant hub accessible to athletes, the local public, and recreational users. Remarkable development will be apparent in the stadium with a new and world-class infrastructure including the new convention centre, sports rehabilitation science centre and Youth Park.
The team bound to construct a hotel for athletes and a sports-focused retail mall to make the environment more lively attractive to the public, taking the Singapore Sports Hub and London Olympic Stadium as their model. KL Sports City will also be open for local and international concerts, launching of events, fashion shows, company meetings, and assembly. Through that this goal driven man believes that it will help to boost more its exposure to the international scene.
Other than the sports related activities in the sports city, CEO Azman wants it to have an educational and recreational purpose as well. They will engineer a sports museum and library within the vicinity for the younger generations to know more about the country’s sports history and legends. At the same time, this will be a good tourist attraction for the foreigners to visit, for they can participate in some fun-filled and interactive games. They also plan to create customized football-themed postcards as a souvenir for the visitors. “We want to give something different. We have to make it to more interesting” CEO Azman continues to explain.
We want to give something different. We have to make it to more interesting.
REDEFINING STATE-OF-THE-ART
One of the many things that CEO Azman explains, he keeps more emphasis to the welfare and safety of the general public as their primary goal. In line with that, KL Sports City will take out the free seating concept. They will introduce the numbered seats, ticket scanning system, and the use of specific gates ticket holders according to the seating area while taking other precautionary steps by meeting the Fire & Safety standards.
International stadium experts Populous who designed the Yankee Stadium, London Olympic Stadium, South Korea’s Incheon 2014 Asian Games stadium and the Etihad Stadium expansion project in Manchester has been appointed to design the KL Sports City.
KL Sports City is actually the brainchild of YB Khairy Jamaluddin—the Minister of Youth and Sports Malaysia—to usher a new era of sports and entertainment in Malaysia. This place will bring in the best practices from around the world, in terms of aesthetic design and state-of-the-art facilities. The sports city will hopefully create its own identity that will leave a mark in Asian sporting map for the coming years.
From the O2 in London down to the Staples Center in LA, every country provides a pride of place for its National Stadium, and by 2021 Kuala Lumpur will finally have one to call its own.
