Barcelona has another project on the horizon that will contribute to revitalizing Montjuïc and improving the network of sports facilities. After more than two years of conversations, the Damm Foundation has announced an agreement with the Club Natació Montjuïc to acquire 30,000 square meters of land where it plans to build a sports city for its football club.
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Damm will pay three million euros to Club Natació Montjuïc, which is getting rid of disused land where a golf course stood until a few years ago. This operation "will mean a significant economic injection that will serve to clean up the finances of the Club Natació and boost it as a sports benchmark in Barcelona," said the entity's president, Jaume Roca.
The Damm Foundation plans to invest between three and four million euros in the construction of the sports city, which means that the project will involve a global investment of up to seven million euros, including the cost of purchasing the land. The forecast is that works will begin in the last quarter of 2021 and that the sports city can be inaugurated in early 2023.
For the Damm Foundation, chaired by Demetrio Carceller, this investment "will be one of the most important projects in its history," as it means "making the dream of providing the club with first-class sports facilities within the city of Barcelona a reality," explains the foundation's vice president and president of Club Fútbol Damm, Ramon Agenjo.
The project to be developed on the old Montjuïc golf course has been commissioned to Barcelona architecture studios Max de Cusa and Hiha Studio and plans to build two 11-a-side football fields on the 30,000 square meters available, one of which can be divided into two 7-a-side football fields. Two buildings will also be constructed. The main building will house the offices of Club Fútbol Damm, medical services, the gym, and the main field's changing rooms, as well as a study room for the academic training of players.
In the second building, located between the two fields, there will be stands with capacity for 550 spectators, a hundred-square-meter restaurant area, and other changing rooms.
The objective of the Damm Foundation is for the sports city to be exemplary from an environmental and landscape point of view. Thus, energy efficiency is prioritized, and photovoltaic panels will be installed to achieve maximum self-sufficiency. Water consumption will also be optimized with a tank to store rainwater for irrigating the fields.
Club Fútbol Damm will be the main user of the sports city, but employees and family members of the brewing group will also be able to use it. Currently, Damm's teams play on two rented fields located at the Horta Municipal Sports Center and the CEM Vall d'Hebron-Teixonera.
More than 200 male and female players, from benjamín to juvenil categories, are currently part of Club Fútbol Damm, founded in 1954 thanks to the initiative of a group of amateur employees of the company who wanted to help train and educate the youth of the neighborhood of the old factory on Rosselló Street in Barcelona.
The sports entity has achieved recognized prestige thanks to its formative spirit and its promotion of grassroots sports. Damm's teams are also a recurring quarry for major clubs. In 2019, for example, 32 CF Damm athletes were signed by professional teams such as RCD Espanyol, FC Barcelona, and Girona FC. Throughout history, players such as Gerard Moreno, Carlos Pérez, David López, Aleix Vidal, Cristian Tello, or Keita Baldé, among others, have passed through the club.
In its beginnings, CF Damm played on the defunct grounds of La Ferroviaria, in Sant Andreu, and on the Alevín field, in La Meridiana. In 1982, the club bought the Aeda field, popularly known as La Selva field, in the Porta neighborhood, where it remained until 2012.
The Damm Foundation channels the social action of the brewing group, which is its sole source of income. In 2019, the company donated 4.43 million euros to the foundation, which allocated 85% of this amount to sports, social, and cultural activities. Of this amount, 54% are own projects and 46% are collaborations with third-party entities.
Apart from CF Damm, the foundation's flagship projects are the Damm Padel Club and the historical archive, one of the most important in Catalonia, with a heritage of more than 140,000 objects, images, and films that have been gathered since the company's birth in 1876. the foundation is currently promoting the digitalization of all this heritage in order to make it available to society.