Milan construction workers put on brave face as race to finish Olympic hockey arena comes down to the wire

Chris Jones reports from Milan ahead of the Milan Olympics in Cortina.

On a clear Saturday afternoon, the evening sun reflected off the aluminum façade of the Milano Santagiulia hockey arena. At least for a minute or two it looked the way it should have looked, the way it had looked for years in renderings and promises.

It shone like Olympic gold.

Then the sun set a little more, hidden behind a thin cloud, and the glittering vision gave way to a grimmer reality: The troubled arena, just over a month away from being scheduled to host its first hockey game—before it was scheduled to host the world—would not be completed.

Will it be completed enough, that is the real question.

Shortly after four o'clock, a line of exhausted construction workers staggered past the barricades at the end of their shift, as if answering a church bell that was ringing in the distance.

Many were still wearing green and yellow safety vests. Their helmets sat on their heads or were tied to their waists. They spoke to each other in Italian and Arabic, as well as a mixture of these two languages.

An elderly man named Michel, hunched over from the cold, waited for them in his mobile cantina, which looked as if it had not been mobile for a long time. The worker walked up Michel's pallet steps and treated himself to a small paper cup of espresso after work.

Four other men continued to work nearby, assembling a white tent that will serve as the entrance to the wide boulevard through which fans will be able to enter the arena. Workers have already erected a row of pointed concession tents, the sound of their drills and Michel's generator in a deafening war for supremacy.

It's hard to believe that winners will soon be crowned here.

The arena has been the subject of ominous complaints from the NHL, which agreed to let its players go to the Olympics for the first time since 2014 and is now threatening to reconsider its decision. The surface, although up to international standards, is smaller than NHL rinks. There are also concerns that the untested plant will not be able to produce safe ice, flood after flood.

Organizers tried to allay these concerns, as Michel did between shoppers.

“It has to be done,” he said. “Then the job will be done.”

Considering the still raw state of the place, the size of the rink and the quality of the ice seem like minor issues. The test event is scheduled for January 9-11. It was unclear Saturday how the players, let alone the crowd, would be able to get inside.

To be fair, or at least reassuringly, the appearance of the arena only suffers because of its surroundings.

The Santa Giulia neighborhood is what city planners call a “zone of transition.” The factories that have abandoned Milan are gradually being replaced by glass-walled offices and new apartment buildings, many of which still have Christmas lights hanging from their balconies.

But dilapidated warehouses and graffiti-strewn old apartments remain, displaying Naples' football colors rather than Milan's or Christmas lights.

There are also vast tracts of vacant lots abandoned in the middle of development following a dispute over the safety of local groundwater. The arena is surrounded by dirt fields, roads leading to nowhere, and piles of rubble that have stood for so long that trees have begun to grow out of them.

Milano Santagiulia, which is being built privately, needed to be spectacular to outshine its post-industrial background. Instead, its cranes and construction debris—a continuous symphony of clattering steel and truck reverse signals echoing off its hull—cause it to disappear into the chaotic scene rather than overcome it.

More construction workers poured out of the gates and no-trespass warning signs fell into puddles. Some workers rode rickety electric scooters. Most of them had difficulty walking to the nearest bus stop.

Their route, the same route that Canadian hockey fans would take four weeks later, was strewn with broken glass and hundreds of Michel's discarded espresso cups, rustling like leaves at dusk. There was even a car with flat tires that someone would have to move.

The remaining to-do list seemed endless. Another weary-eyed worker—his name Ahmed written in black marker on his hard hat—took his turn in front of Michel. He was asked if he was in the arena that day.

“Stadium?” – he said. “Yeah.”

“Will this be finished?” he was asked. “Finished?»

Michel raised his eyebrows, wanting to hear the answer.

Ahmed just smiled before drinking his espresso. And then he picked it up.