The agreement on the financing of the first phase of the construction of the Novska Gaming Center was signed on Tuesday in Novska. It will be the first center of its kind in Europe. At the same time, it is the first project financed from the new European Just Transition Fund.
The holder of the project is the Public Institution Regional Coordinator of Sisačko-Moslavinačka županija, and partners Sisačko-moslavinačka &skaron;panija, Development Agency SIMORA and City of Novska.
The first phase will be financed non-refundable with 26.3 million euros, and the financing of the entire project will reach the amount of 100 million euros.
The center for the gaming industry will be built in the Enterprise Zone of the City of Novska on an area of eight hectares.
The campus is a complex of several buildings: a faculty with a sports hall and a swimming pool, a dormitory for accommodating 250 students, an accelerator with a VR studio, an incubator with a hall for testing video games and other accompanying contents.
The space will be dominated by an e-sports arena that resembles a grounded UFO and will have 2,500 seats for spectators and a space for gaming competitions.
Novska: Signed contract for the “Center of gaming industry” project |
In the future gaming campus, a five-year higher education program with 50 students per year and a high school program for 24 students will be conducted.
In the first phase of the project, roads, sports fields, faculty buildings, a student dormitory and a power plant will be built.
Construction works are starting now, and their completion and opening of the gaming center is expected in 2027.
The contract on the financing of the first phase of construction was signed by the Minister of Regional Development and European Union Funds Šime Erlić, Director of the Central Agency for Financing and Contracting of Programs and Projects of the European Union Dragan Jelić and on behalf of the user, the director of the Regional Coordinator of Sisčko-Moslavinačke županija Andreja Šeperac.
The ceremony was attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovi. and the Minister of Labor and Social Policy, Marin Pileti, for whose mayoral mandate in 2018, the Novska Gaming Center project was started.
After the Homeland War, deindustrialization, floods and earthquakes, Sisako-Moslavina County showed resilience and saw its opportunity in all the adversities that befell it, Prime Minister Plenkovi said.
He is satisfied that the construction of the center will be financed from the EU’s just transition fund.
“The purpose of the fund is to transform areas of traditional industries into areas of industries of the future. Sisako-Moslavina County and the City of Novska have shown the power of adapting to new trends and directions of development. They have moved towards the industry of the future and in digital transformation and marked themselves on the gaming map of Europe,” said Plenković.
Novska: Signed contract for the “Center of gaming industry” project |
In Novska, the construction of a gaming center is starting, but also a new development era, said Minister Erlić
“This is a strategic Croatian project, because we have made a step towards the important industry of the future, digitization, and created a new environment. Staff will be trained here for the professions of the future. This project, as the first to be financed from “The Just Transition Fund is an example of its meaning. The area of traditional, technologically outdated and environmentally unacceptable industry will be transformed into the center of the industry of the future, the likes of which are rare even in Europe,” Erli said.
“Back in 2018, Novska was barely noticeable on the map of Croatia, and today it is the center of gaming in Europe. Young people come to Novska for education, but they also stay to live here,” said Novska Mayor Marija Kušmiš.
Since 2018, in the area of the City of Novska, unemployment has decreased by 50 percent, and employment has increased by 17 percent, she pointed out.