Arenastaden – a super investment?

Background and Problem: Arenastaden is a unique and complex investment project since it distinguishes itself from the many arena investments made during the arena boom in Sweden. There are no previous research on such a unique investment project as Arenastaden. How has and how could such investment be managed? Objective: The purpose of this study is to investigate whether Arenastaden can be classified as a super investment and if so to study how the model looks like for Arenastaden. Furthermore, the purpose is to identify which socio-economic effects that were taken into account and draw lessons from the investment project for future, similar investments. Method: In the paper, a qualitative research approach and a case study research design have been used. Theory: The theoretical framework begins with a section about what characterizes a super investment. Then the theoretical framework continues by describing mega projects, municipal investments, collaboration between different actors as well as the socio-economic effects that arena constructions and events can cause. The chapter ends with a conceptual model. Empirical data: The chapter begins with information about Arenastaden. The information consists of secondary data from an audit report by Ernst & Young and documents from the municipality. Then the primary data are presented which consists of results from the semi-structured interviews, the results are divided by respective interviewee. Analysis and conclusion: In the analysis section the compiled empirical data is put against the theoretical framework. We have in this study concluded that Arenastaden can be classified as a super investment. We have modified Alpenberg and Karlsson (2005)'s model of how super investments are made to replace the authors' influencing factors since they are not directly applicable on Arenastaden. The three influencing factors which instead can be applied to Arenastaden and that permeates the whole investment project is that it can be seen as an indirect municipal investment, the a private-public partnership was a fact and that the socio-economic effects had a great impact. Another conclusion is that the socio-economic effects that were considered in the initiation was marketing in order to achieve an expansion of Växjo. There were not many socio-economic effects that were considered and we feel that a deeper discussion and analysis around these would not been profitable. The investment project should, however, had a bigger and stronger project management because it had led to greater insight and control over the project and the economic dimensions. Furthermore, a more detailed risk analysis should have been constructed