Tochigi Sports Park, Sports park in Utsunomiya, Japan
Tochigi Sports Park (栃木県総合運動公園) is a prefectural sports park in Utsunomiya, known locally as Sōgō Gurando. Its facilities include the Kansai Stadium Tochigi, a 24,000-capacity second-generation athletics stadium with a natural-grass infield, the Eisuke Stadium baseball ground with 15,395 seats, a second athletics ground with a blue all-weather track, and the Nikkan Arena Tochigi indoor hall with a 50 m pool. The park's low concrete grandstand has a flat overhanging roof, a repeated arcade of round arches, pale greenish curtains behind glazed upper openings, reddish-brown brick bays below, and green Japanese signage on the top fascia.
The park opened in March 1952, built on the site of a wartime winter runway of Nakajima Airfield that had been cut into the hillside and left unused. Work began in 1948, funded by public donations marking the previous year's promulgation of the Japanese Constitution, and used Oya stone, with an average of 300 labourers a day and over 600 at peak. It was extensively rebuilt for the 1980 National Sports Festival, and from 2015 the former Utsunomiya Racecourse and police site were added.
Locals call the park "Sōgō Gurando", and it was laid out with Ōya stone quarried and moved by hand, at times by more than 600 labourers a day. The Wakamatsubara Shrine, founded in 1940 for the western Nishikawada district, stands inside the grounds south of Tochinoki Family Land, and its annual festival is held on 15 November.
The park lies about 15 minutes on foot from Nishikawada Station on the Tobu Utsunomiya Line, via Kokutai-dori. Buses from Utsunomiya Station stop at Sogo Undo Koen Nishi, and from Sugimamiya Station at the south or east gate. Parking has been charged for stays over two hours since April 2019, and entry is generally barred between 21:30 and 5:00.
The park hosted the 35th National Sports Festival, the 1980 Tobu-no-ha Kokutai, and later the 77th edition in 2022, the Ichigo Ichie Tochigi Kokutai. Both events drove major rebuilding of the grounds, including the 2015-2022 sports zone built over the former Utsunomiya Racecourse next door.
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