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 Milano Cortina Olympics.

On a crisp, clear Saturday afternoon, the late-day sun reflected off the Milano Santagiulia hockey arena’s aluminum facade. If only for a minute or two, it looked as it was meant to look, the way it’s appeared for years in renderings and promises.

It shined like Olympic gold.

Then the sun set just a little more, slipping behind some thin cloud, and the gleaming vision made way for a bleaker reality: The troubled arena, a little over a month before it’s meant to host its first hockey game — before it’s meant to host the world — isn’t going to get finished.

Will it get finished enough is the real question.

A little after four o’clock, an exhausted string of construction workers staggered past the barricades at the end of their shift, as though answering the church bell that chimed in the distance.

Many still wore their green and yellow safety vests. Their hard hats sat perched on their heads or belted to their waists. They spoke to each other in Italian and Arabic and a mix of the two.

An older man named Michel, hunched against the cold, waited for them in his mobile cantina, which looked as though it hadn’t been mobile for some time. A worker climbed up Michel’s steps, made from pallets, and treated himself to an after-work espresso in a small paper cup.

Four other men continued toiling nearby, piecing together a white tent that will serve as the entrance to the wide boulevard that will grant fans access to the arena. The workers had already erected a string of pointy concession tents, the sound of their drills and Michel’s generator in a deafening war for supremacy.

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

The arena has been the subject of ominous complaints from the NHL, which, for the first time since 2014, has agreed to release its players for the Olympics, and now is threatening to reconsider. The sheet, while within international standards, is smaller than NHL rinks. There are also concerns that the untested plant won’t produce safe ice, flood after flood.

Organizers have tried to dispel those fears the way Michel did between customers.

“It has to get done,” he said. “So it will get done.”

Given the still-raw state of the place, rink dimensions and ice quality seem like small worries. A test event is scheduled for Jan. 9-11. On Saturday, it wasn’t clear how players, never mind crowds, would find their way inside.

To be fair, or at least more hopeful, the arena’s appearance only suffers for its surroundings.

Santa Giulia, the neighbourhood, is what urban planners call “an area of transition.” The factories that have departed Milan are slowly being replaced by glass-walled offices and fresh residential units, many of them with Christmas lights still strung across their balconies.

But crumbling warehouses and older, graffiti-tagged apartments remain, displaying Napoli’s underclass football colours rather than Milan’s, or Christmas lights.

There are also vast stretches of wasteland, abandoned mid-development, after a dispute over the safety of local groundwater. The arena is surrounded by muddy fields and roads leading to nowhere and piles of rubble that have sat for so long, trees have started growing out of them.

The Milano Santagiulia, which is being developed privately, would have needed to be spectacular to eclipse its post-industrial backdrop. Instead, its cranes and construction debris — the incessant symphony of clattering steel and truck reverse alarms echoing off its shell — make it disappear into the chaotic scene rather than overcome it.

More construction workers spilled out of its gates, the warning signs not to trespass fallen into puddles. Some of the workers doubled up on wobbly electric scooters. Most struggled to walk to the closest bus stop.

Their route, the same route that Canadian hockey fans will take four weeks from now, was littered with broken glass and hundreds of Michel’s discarded espresso cups, rustling like leaves in the dusk. There was even a flat-tired car that someone will have to move.

The remaining to-do list seemed endless. Another tired-eyed worker — his name, Ahmed, was written in black marker on his hard hat — took his turn in front of Michel. He was asked whether he’d been inside the arena that afternoon.

“Estadio?” he said. “Si.”

“Will it be finished?” he was asked. “Finito?”

Michel lifted his eyebrows, curious to hear the answer.

Ahmed only smiled before he took his espresso. And then he raised it.