Coventry City are scheduled to play at the Arena from 2005

The Arena project is planned as a multi-purpose complex, with dining and conference facilities, a music venue, a hotel and a casino, as well as being the new home of the football club.

Councillors voted in favour of providing the remaining �21m needed to save the project back in October.

Since then all the organisations involved in the project including Arena Coventry, contractor Laing O'Rourke and The Alan Edward Higgs charity, have signed the contract needed to start work on the new stadium.

The scheme to build the 32,000-seat stadium in Foleshill has been plagued with difficulties from the start.

Management company CV One chairman Martin Ritchley, who is also chief executive of Coventry Building Society, said the Arena project offered enormous economic and social benefits to the city.

Coventry City are scheduled to move into the stadium on the site of the former Foleshill gasworks in the summer of 2005.