Officials Stadium! 7 years after its inauguration, the 12,000-seat arena in Târgu Jiu is the home of City Hall employees
The fruit of a project that had completely different perspectives at the time of its start, the 12,000-seat stadium in Târgu Jiu awaits brighter times. The UEFA Category 4 arena currently only hosts CSM's League 3 matches, plus the occasional athletics competition, while the offices within the stadium are still occupied by city hall officials. In short, a rather disadvantageous recipe for the goal that cost 26 million euros of money from the budget.
When bankruptcy and the disappearance of the old team were notions difficult to imagine, Brâncusi's city was also preparing to step into another era in terms of sports infrastructure. Cluj, Ploiești and Capital had already done it, Craiova was about to do it.
However, fate had other plans for the Pandurii: the team disintegrated, the stadium remained unused for a long time, and the beneficiaries of the arena ended up being the City Hall employees!
Officials Stadium! The arena that saw the rise and fall of the Pandas is more “unemployed”
It was still early in the morning when the Gazeta Sporturilor team made its appearance at the multifunctional stadium in Gorj, meanwhile renamed “Constantina Diță-Tomescu”, in honor of the former great athlete. It's not even 09:00 yet, but the front esplanade is bustling. The parking lot is also full, and a queue of 15-20 people has formed in front of a room that has been converted into a counter.
No, Pandurii has not been “revived”, nor has a match been scheduled, and the people standing in line are not doing it to buy tickets for any event hosted here.
The people gathered in an Indian line, in a skin-deep rain, are, in fact, individuals waiting for their turn to submit applications for the renewal of their driving license! There is a queue of several meters, stretching beyond the outer roof of the buildings, a sign that we have come upon a day of intense activity.
A few meters away, sheltered from the elements, a few employees out in the air smoke, sit at the rigging and drink their coffee before the start of the program.
After all, it's just an ordinary day's work for civil servants who have moved to the modern premises of the stadium for many years. The “temporary” situation of a few years ago, when several earthquakes had damaged the City Hall, became permanent, so that the more “unemployed” arena when it comes to sports competitions has become the home of public administration staff.
At that time, the mayor Romanescu specified that the employees will carry out their activity “in the rooms inside the municipal stadium, which present guarantees for an earthquake of up to 8.4”.
Football takes center stage at the modern stadium in Târgu Jiu
It is, in fact, the main purpose of the stadium built for the Pandurii, when the club led by Marin Condescu was terrorizing the ranks of League 1.
Today, the Pandurii brand is “discarded”, and the stadium no longer hosts matches from the first two leagues at all. CSM, the City Hall team, is playing in League 3, while the community of the mining town sighs for the old days. Upon promotion to “C”, thousands of people came to see the local team in the “barrage” with CSM Lugoj.
In the past years, Mititelu's Craiova has also “stayed” here in the moments when it could not perform on “Oblemenco”. That's it, though. As Viitorul Târgu Jiu also disappeared from the radars, football was served with a spoon in the city that produced the country's runner-up in 2013.
The subject of the offices at the stadium came up again and again in the attention of the local or central media, but mayor Marcel Romanescu always wanted to “defuse” it:
There are commercial spaces, which were designed for this purpose when the stadium was built, and administrative spaces. There is a bad faith interpretation by some, as if those administrative spaces were dedicated only to sports activity.
– Marcel Romanescu, mayor of Târgu Jiu, in 2022
The only good news: the inside of the stadium was not damaged
GSP reporters also entered the stadium premises, which manages to maintain itself in impeccable quality conditions, almost seven years after its inauguration.
Basically, the arena that could host international duels or a Cup final at any time awaits its tenants in an almost immaculate version.
The stands show no signs of deterioration, the athletics track is fully functional, and the lawn is also in optimal parametersafter, in the summer of 2024, it had suffered from flocks of crows that compromised the seeding of the new playing surface.
Upstairs, in the corridors of the two floors, in the hallways, in the toilets and in the spaces around the changing rooms, cleanliness takes priority. The wear and tear has not yet taken its toll, the walls have not turned black, and the ceilings resist the vagaries of the weather.
Almost 7 years have passed since the inauguration, no national team has come to play here
Although it was completed at the end of 2017, the stadium was blocked for almost a year and a half against the backdrop of problems arising from investments for interior fittings and utility connectionswhich, initially, should have been the responsibility of the local authorities. The arena was only inaugurated on October 5, 2019.
The strange thing is that, all this time, the stadium in Târgu Jiu was not approved to host international matches. Of no type! Even the youth teams, U19, U20 or U21, did not perform at the modern stadium in Gorj, although it would, in theory, represent a viable solution.
Many years after its inauguration, the legal situation of the stadium on the banks of the Ji river still contains a dose of uncertainty, in the context in which certain spaces in the complex do not, in fact, belong to the City Hall, but to the old bankrupt Pandurii brand.
The mayor changed its name
Starting from the winter of 2022, the stadium in Târgu Ju will no longer be called “Tudor Vladimirescu”, after the former ruler of Wallachia, but “Constantina Diță-Tomescu”. The former marathon runner, Olympic and world champion, was born in Gorj county, in the town of Turburea.
Edilul Marcel Romanescu explained at that moment the reasoning behind the decision:
“I know for sure that Tudor Vladimirescu represents a lot for national history, even more so for the history of the municipality of Târgu Jiu, but I am convinced that, related to sports, we had to choose the best performing athlete that Gorj county has given in the last 100 years.
When we refer to an Olympic champion, I think that things no longer require much discussion”, the mayor of Târgu Jiu said in December 2022.
