Atmosphere – Mood – Emotion: Since 2015, SSV Jahn Regensburg has been playing in a flash new stadium. To make sure that home fans and visitors can get to the games conveniently, more than 2,600 parking spaces were created around the Continental Arena. 115 steel lighting poles from Tecpoles ensure optimum lighting of the parking areas for cars, buses and bicycles.
The difficult path to the new stadium
It took more than 20 long years, but in 2003, the wait was finally over and SSV Jahn Regensburg would be returning to professional football in Germany with its promotion to the 2nd division of the German Bundesliga. Even as early as the 2003/2004 season, discussions about a new stadium began to germinate, because the venerable Jahn Stadium in Prüfeninger Strasse, which had been opened in 1926, no longer met the requirements of a modern football arena.
However, the new stadium would have to wait a little bit longer. Although for a long time things were looking good for the newly promoted team, at the end of the season the club had to join the ranks of the amateurs again. However, the people in charge at the city of Regensburg never let go of the idea for a new stadium and in July 2011 the time was finally ripe: SSV Jahn had established itself in the newly created 3rd division and the new stadium was a done deal.
Lighting poles – unobtrusive and indispensable
A location was quickly found for the new stadium on a piece of ground south of the A3 autobahn. On 30 January 2014, following an intensive planning phase, the ground-breaking ceremony for the stadium project took place. However, the new home of the Regensburg team also needed a considerable amount of new infrastructure around it.
Anyone who doesn't use public transport to get to the game can park at Regensburg University or the nearby University Hospital, or directly at the arena itself. The car parks at the arena are optimally illuminated by products that are as unobtrusive as they are indispensable: steel lighting poles from Neumarkt-based company Tecpoles.
Thanks to lighting poles from Tecpoles the arena car park is perfectly illuminated. This means that fans can find their way around safely and easily when arriving and leaving.
Sebastian Graf
Operations Manager Continental Arena
das Stadtwerk Regensburg.Bäder und Arenen GmbH (stadium operator)
Customised solutions
“We are the only company worldwide to work with concrete, steel, glass and FGRP using cutting-edge and established technologies. This allows us to offer our customers the most cost-effective solution tailored to their needs,” says Bernd Mühlbauer, Area Sales Manager for Bavaria at the Lighting Division of Tecpoles. In the case of the Continental Arena this solution comprised: 100 standard steel lighting poles and 15 floodlight poles in the same material.
“This is where our expertise in materials naturally comes into play. The 100 standard products were manufactured at our plant in Konin, Poland. In this ultra-modern facility in the centre of Poland we are using a unique technology, laser welding,” explains Mühlbauer. “The 15 floodlight poles are custom fabrications that we designed and built specifically according to customer requirements and structural calculations. The special lighting poles were produced in Dinkelsbühl, the home of our specialists for small volume and one-off production.”
Quality prevails
Bernd Mühlbauer is satisfied both with the international collaboration between colleagues at the Konin, Dinkelsbühl and Neumarkt sites and with the interaction with external partners: “This worked out very well. We sent the last part delivery punctually to Regensburg in May, so that in plenty of time for the opening of the arena on 18 July all parking spots would be well lighted.”
And there are 2,600 such spaces around the arena, 1,800 for cars, 27 for buses and more than 800 – absolutely essential in a university town like Regensburg – reserved for cyclists. It's space that is needed. Because, with a capacity of 15,210 the average number of spectators in the Continental Arena at Jahn Regensburg's home games in the last season (2017/2018) was 11,081 fans. The team from the Upper Palatinate region has long since demonstrated its quality, just like the steel lighting poles from Tecpoles.
Technical Details
End client
City of Regensburg (stadium operator: das Stadtwerk Regensburg.Bäder und Arenen GmbH)
Project duration
April / May 2015
Scope of delivery
100 lighting poles (tapered) and 15 floodlight poles (tapered)
Details
- Material: Steel
- Height: 5 metres (tapered lighting poles), 14 metres (tapered floodlight poles)
- Base diameter: 140 / Spigot: 76 millimetres (tapered lighting poles); Base: 221 / Spigot: 76 millimetres (tapered floodlight poles);
- Weight: 45 kg (tapered lighting poles), 242 kg (tapered floodlight poles (KFLM)