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After more than a decade of stuttering progress, a revised multi-billion dollar plan to turn a former industrial site on the outskirts of Milan into a new city district is starting to materialise. The development, called Milano Santa Giulia, is a 110-hectare site in the south-eastern suburbs of Italy’s business capital.
Today, it is dominated by brownfield land. However, under a recently revamped masterplan, which is due to be formally released by December, the area is destined to become a model 15-minute city.
Milano Santa Giulia will feature more than 3200 homes, 91,000 square metres of office space, the city’s third-biggest park, two retail centres, schools, hotels, a new campus for Milan’s music conservatory and a sports arena that will host the men’s ice hockey at the next Winter Olympics being held in Italy in 2026.
The project will cost €2.5bn to develop and is estimated to be valued at €3.5bn once complete. Giancarlo Tancredi, Milan’s deputy mayor for urban regeneration, has described it as one of Europe’s most extensive urban regeneration projects.
A rocky history
Over the European summer, Milano Santa Giulia reached two important milestones. In June, Australian-headquartered developer Lendlease took control of the project by acquiring the full surface rights from the landowner, local property group Risanamento. Then in August, work commenced on the arena, known as PalaItalia, which with a capacity of 16,000 will be the city’s biggest indoor multipurpose stadium.
This recent progress is preceded by a long and, at times, rocky history. The local government started working with Risanamento to redevelop the site in the early 2000s. In 2003, British architect Norman Foster designed the project’s first masterplan, which consisted of residential and commercial buildings encircling a park.
Construction of a business district known as Spark began on the site’s southernmost area; however, the project was halted by local authorities in 2010 upon claims the land remediation works did not comply with safety standards. Five years later, a court rejected the claims, allowing the development to proceed.
“After this pause, the private needs of the landowners and public needs of the city and regional governments changed, so the project needed to be modified,” says Andrea Ceriani, a lawyer at Belvedere Inzaghi & Partners, who is advising on the project.
In 2017, Lendlease came onboard as the project’s developer and completed the Spark business district while redesigning the remainder of the 2003 masterplan into the more ambitious vision being pursued today. After successfully fighting off two court challenges in 2022, one regarding the arena and the other traffic congestion, the first phase of Milano Santa Giulia is on track to be completed by 2026.
Calling investors
Lendlease is now looking for project partners. “Our target is to attract international or national investors to develop the area with us,” says Fabrizio Zichichi, the project’s director. The firm has already done this for the completed Spark district, whose 200,000 square metres of offices makes it the city’s third-biggest business hub. Lendlease owns Spark’s two main office buildings via a joint venture with Canadian pension fund PSP.
Another building that houses broadcaster Sky Italia’s headquarters has been listed on the Singapore stock exchange via a real estate investment trust to attract Asian investors. “The plan is to establish these kinds of partnerships also in the northern area,” says Mr Zichichi.
Among the project’s key selling points are its strategic location and transport connections. Milano Santa Giulia is a 10-minute metro ride to the city centre, a 10-minute drive to Linate airport, and is directly opposite Rogoredo station, which has trains to Rome in less than three hours. New tram and metro lines are planned to further improve city and airport links.
Milano Santa Giulia is Lendlease’s second ongoing urban regeneration project in the city’s outskirts. It is also developing the Mind innovation district on the former expo site in the north-west. “Our global strategy is to identify key gateway cities that demonstrate stability, resilience, sustainability and innovation trends,” says Mr Zichichi. “And Milan for us represents one of them.”
This article first appeared in the October/November 2023 print edition of fDi Intelligence
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