Fakel Stadium

"Fakel" is a football stadium in Voronezh. It is the home arena of the "Fakel" club. It holds 10,052 spectators. There are 4 stands. The "Fakel" sports complex and its entire infrastructure are unthinkable without mentioning KBKhA. The heyday of the bureau came during the years of management of the enterprise by the Hero of Socialist Labor Alexander Konopatov, a big fan of sports. After the construction of the sports complex with a swimming pool, in which the first water treatment system in the USSR appeared with ozone, not chlorine, they began to create a football stadium. In 1986, the teams of the KBKhA workshops played football on the new lawn, and three years later a stand appeared there. Location: Pisatelya Marshaka Street, 1. Voronezh, Russia

The sports complex could boast of infrastructure that no other stadium in Voronezh had. Tennis courts, a mini-football pitch and a gorodki area were located 30 meters from the lawn with an excellent drainage system behind a blue fence. The arena began to host interregional track and field competitions, where a photo finish was used for the first time in the region during one of the tournaments. Fakel was also the only stadium in Voronezh where steeplechase could be held - a race with obstacles in the form of barriers and a pit with water. All open sports infrastructure, except for the football pitch, was covered with regupol - an advanced coating for that time made of rubber crumb and polyurethane. The youth team of Fakel trained and played on the football pitch, and Liski Lokomotiv also played there many times.

But in 1990, KBKhA's funding was greatly cut. The builders left the arena, and the workers of the Fakel sports club did the waterproofing of the stands with their own hands. And after the collapse of the USSR, life at the stadium changed dramatically. The bureau had less and less money every year, and in 1997 the entire sports complex was transferred to a business accounting system. The arena employees had to learn what self-sufficiency was. Debts began to arise, and one day the stadium workers met September 1 in the dark - the electricity was turned off for non-payment. All the formerly free training sessions of sports schools were now conducted only for money. The spaces that were conceived as martial arts and athletics halls began to be rented out as offices and warehouses. The Fakel employees admitted that they learned a lot from the workers of the Central Trade Union Stadium, who ended up on the business accounting system even earlier. A few years later, the bureau also transferred a sanatorium-preventorium in the Sovetsky district, a recreation center on the Venevitinsky cordon and the Vostok pioneer camp to the sports complex. The proceeds from renting out the stadium went towards maintaining these facilities. Then the sports complex ran into debt to the regional budget for tax deductions. And in 2008, the entire sports infrastructure became regional property.

When Alexander Merny became the director of the sports complex, the region began talking about plans to reconstruct the football arena. The manager ordered the creation of a model in which the stadium was surrounded by a rehabilitation center, an ice palace, a hotel, and even a concert hall. However, things did not go further. After the creation of Chaika and Lokomotiv, the youth team of Fakel left the stadium of the same name.

On June 19, 2024, BelinzheneringstroyInvest announced the delivery of the facility, and on the same day it was registered with the cadastral authorities. On June 24, the club's new home arena will be inspected by representatives of the RFU, they plan to begin assessing the readiness of the Fakel stadium in Voronezh to host matches.

On July 23, 2024, the stadium was issued a license to host matches and assigned the first category[7].

On July 27, 2024, the stadium officially opened with the Russian Premier League match Fakel (Voronezh) - Akron (Tolyatti)