The Hardturm Stadium Is Still Stuck — And a Court Decision Is Now Imminent (Kreis 5)
The Federal Court is now the last legal obstacle — but even a ruling in favour might not be the end of it.
The patch of wasteland in Kreis 5 where Grasshopper Club once played their home matches has been empty since 2008. In the nearly two decades since the old Hardturm stadium was demolished, the city has held four public votes on what should replace it, approved three different projects, and watched each one collapse under legal challenge. The current attempt — a mixed-use development called "Ensemble" combining a 18,000-seat football stadium, two 137-metre residential towers and several hundred cooperative housing units — is now before Switzerland's Federal Court in Lausanne. It is the project's last legal hurdle before construction can begin. Whether it will actually be the last is a different question.
The sequence of events that brought it here is almost comically drawn-out. The canton of Zürich approved the site's development plan in 2022. A small group of opponents — a registered association and several private individuals, most from Höngg and the surrounding area of Zürich West, who have throughout insisted on anonymity citing fears of reprisals from football fans — immediately lodged objections. Those objections sat before the Verwaltungsgericht for two full years, a period that would normally take six months. In October 2025, the court dismissed every one of the twenty arguments raised against the project. The opponents' primary concern — that the two planned towers would cast excessive shadow over the neighbourhood — was specifically rejected, with the court finding the site particularly well-suited to high-rise development and the shadow impact unproblematic.
Within weeks, the opponents had taken the case to the Bundesgericht in Lausanne. It remains there now.
What "Winning" Actually Means
Even a clean ruling in the project's favour at federal level would not mean ground-breaking the following Monday. The Ensemble consortium — which includes the City of Zürich, construction group HRS, UBS investment funds, cooperative housing association ABZ, and both FC Zürich and Grasshopper Club — would still need to submit and publicly advertise a full building permit application. That process opens another round of potential objections, again appealable through multiple court tiers. In the most optimistic scenario, project spokesperson Markus Spillmann has put stadium completion at 2030 — ten years after the last popular vote that endorsed it with 59 percent. In the worst case, two to three years beyond that.
The opponents have so far spent over CHF 70,000 in court costs. Various media investigations have pointed toward a cohort of residents from Höngg and Zürich West, including, reportedly, Urs Zweifel, a board member of the Zweifel chips company and nephew of its late founder — though he has denied involvement. Whether those behind the legal action have the appetite and resources to continue challenging a building permit, if it comes to that, is unknown.
What is not unknown is the patience of the two football clubs, who have been playing their home matches in the Letzigrund — a stadium designed for athletics, not football — for nearly two decades. GC's chaotic current season, their ongoing search for a Barrage venue because Metallica has their stadium booked, and the growing alienation between the club and its American owners is in some ways a downstream consequence of the same paralysis. A functioning home of their own has not been available to either Zürich club since the wrecking ball arrived in 2008.
The Bundesgericht's decision, whenever it arrives, will be closely watched.
