Kärnten sports chief backs plan for indoor ski hall

Kärnten’s state sports director, Arno Arthofer, supports the Austrian Ski Federation’s proposal to build indoor ski halls in Austria, ORF reported. He said he could also imagine such a facility in Kärnten, though the idea has drawn criticism.

“Kärnten has other problems at times like these and already enough overpriced ski resorts,” one Facebook comment said in response to Arthofer’s recent statements.

Arthofer said he understood the criticism but stood by his proposal. “If we want skiing, if we want the great successes of our athletes that are rooted in our DNA, and if we want that in the future as well, and if we want children to learn to ski, then we should at least be allowed to think about it,” he said.

He said an indoor ski hall in the Alpine-Adriatic region could make sense, for example at the foothills of the Dreiländereck, a three-country border area. Its proximity to Slovenia and Italy could potentially allow the project to become an European Union project, he said.

Financing remains unresolved

Funding is still entirely open. Arthofer estimated that building a ski hall with a slope of about 300 metres would cost between 75 million and 100 million euros.

He said the federal government and Kärnten could not finance the project alone. The Austrian Ski Federation, businesses, interested investors, tourism officials and mountain railway operators should work together on a concept and then submit a concrete proposal, he said.

Arthofer cited the Alpincenter Hamburg-Wittenburg in Germany as a model. The facility has a skiable area of 30,000 square metres and has been operating for 20 years.