The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport has given its stadium in Siem Reap to a private construction company in exchange for a new stadium located on less valuable land 4 km outside of town, said Ung Oeun, Siem Reap’s first deputy governor.
Ung Oeun said $2 million of the new stadium’s price tag will be the cost of the land, while the construction will cost $1 million.
At 10 hectares, the new site is about double the size of the existing stadium’s property, though the value of the land at the current stadium is $100 per square meter, while the new site’s land is worth about $60 per square meter, Ung Oeun said. Mao Chan Than Co Ltd construction company plans to build a luxury hotel at the site of the old stadium once the new stadium is completed, he said.
According to Ung Oeun, the old stadium needs to be vacated because it is too small and foreign guests staying at nearby hotels have been complaining about noise coming from the town’s public sports ground. However, Ung Oeun noted that the noise was not the result of sports, but of music concerts organized in the sports ground. “We have received complaints from 27…foreign hotel guests [who] refused to pay their hotel rate because they were disturbed by a concert organized in the stadium,” Ung Oeun said. “They paid only 50 percent out of [the] total rate because [they] can’t sleep.”
Nighttime concerts could be held at the new stadium without disturbing hotel guests, he said.
