Union Berlin’s President Dirk Zingler considers the fear that the cult club from Köpenick could fall victim to commercialization to be unfounded after its first Bundesliga promotion. “Our budget in the Bundesliga is about 20 million euros higher than in the 2nd league. But Union has always been a professional sports club. We can deal with it and will therefore not fundamentally change,” said the 54-year-old to Welt am Sonntag.
Zingler explained: “In the last ten days 5,000 new members have joined the association. They do not do this out of concern for commercialisation, but because they want to go the way of Union with us.”
In response to the growing interest in the club, the club boss wants to push ahead with plans to expand the An der Alten Försterei stadium. “We hope to get building rights in the next twelve months,” Zingler said. The additional burden for transport and the environment is currently being investigated.
If the building permit is granted in the summer of 2020, “we will decide whether to start the expansion immediately”. For Zingler, however, a change of location is not an option: “The Alte Försterei is a very important part of our identity.”
The stadium, which has a capacity of 22,012 spectators and in whose reconstruction and modernisation fans played a major role from 2008 onwards, was already operating at 98 percent of capacity during the past second league season. “We have decided to expand our location piece by piece – and now, as a final step, we want to expand the stadium to 37,000 spectators. With almost 30,000 members at present, this is not an absurd dimension,” Zingler explained.
