The surplus from the management will be used by Ostrava for the construction of an athletics hall

Ostrava - The surplus from the city’s budget from last year will be used by Ostrava for the planned construction of an athletics hall. The city has a balance of about 534 million crowns in its current account, approximately 330 million crowns will go specifically to the funding of the athletics hall. The rest of the funds will be kept in reserve and used for possible further investments, said Mayor Petr Kajnar (elected for the CSSD).
    The city expects that the athletics hall will be partially financed by funds from the European Union. "We still don't know the exact amount, because we don't know how much money we will draw from European funds for other projects. Therefore, we cannot include the hall in this financing and say that construction can start and we will see if there will be money from European funds or not," said Kajnar.
    According to him, the city has allocated the full amount of costs for the construction of the hall. In the event that European money is used for construction, the remaining funds will be returned to the city budget.
    "We have deliberately structured our draw from European funds so that there are more projects. Therefore, if some of them do not succeed, the others will be able to draw money so that we do not leave any remainder," clarified Kajnar.
    A contractor for the construction of the hall has already been selected, and the signing of the contract is awaited, which can only happen when the financing for the construction is clear.
    "The athletics hall is a sports facility that the city has wanted for definitely 10 or 15 years, because Ostrava is a relatively significant athletic center in the country," noted Kajnar. According to him, athletes do not have sufficient training conditions in winter, and many of them thus go to Prague, which harms sports in the region. Kajnar added that after the completion of the hall, Ostrava could become an athletics center for training athletes, just like Prague.
    The athletics hall in Ostrava is set to meet the parameters of the International Association of Athletics Federations. It will be built near the ČEZ Arena in Ostrava-Vítkovice. It will include a running oval with six tracks of 200 meters in length, eight straight tracks of 60 meters in length, and sectors for high jump, long jump, pole vault, and shot put.