AZ plans to have a new roof on the AFAS stadium in Alkmaar by the start of the coming football season, CEO Robert Eenhoorn said at the club's New Year's reception. For the rest of this season, the Alkmaar team will play without a roof on their stadium.
"The aim is for the new stadium roof to be finished for the first matches of next season," Eenhoorn said. "Furthermore, the renovation plans will focus on comfort and experience."
The year 2019 was a busy one for the Netherlands, with elections and strikes, multiple high profile murders and shootings, and a summer full of heat records, severe storms and poisonous caterpillars. Here follows a review of the top ten stories of this year.
Protesting farmers are causing quite a bit of traffic chaos in Netherlands on Wednesday morning. At Alkmaar, a group of around 80 tractors climbed onto the A9 highway towards Amsterdam - against the orders of the police.
AZ will be playing its league match against Ajax in its own stadium on Sunday. After inspecting the AFAS stadium, and advice from TNO, the municipality of Alkmaar decided to release the stadium in time for the match.
An ATM was blown open on Dorpsstraat in Noord-Scharwoude early on Monday morning. This is the fifth such explosion in Noord-Holland in a week. Last week four ATMs were blown open in Alkmaar, Amsterdam and Zaandam, and one ATM bombing was prevented, NH Nieuws reports.
The bombing in Noord-Scharwoude happened at around 3:30 a.m., the police said on Twitter. Two people were seen fleeing the scene on a scooter. Whether they actually managed to steal any money from the ATM, is not yet clear.
A 48-year-old woman who was shot by police officers near a primary school in Alkmaar on Wednesday, succumbed to her injuries, the Public Prosecutor said on Thursday. She was shot after she refused to follow police orders, according to the police.
The police responded to Piemstraat on Wednesday morning after multiple reports of the woman committing vandalism on the street. Responding officers ordered her to stop, but she did not listen, a police spokesperson said to NH Nieuws. The officers shot at the woman when she came at them with a knife, according to the regional broadcaster.
Police officers shot and injured a woman near a primary school in Alkmaar on Wednesday morning. Multiple pupils of the primary school witnessed the shooting, bystanders told NH Nieuws and NoordHollands Dagblad. The woman was taken to an area hospital
The incident happened on Piemstraat, near primary school Durv! located on Elgerweg in the Noord-Holland city. An ambulance was dispatched to the scene at 8:16 a.m., followed by a trauma team by helicopter one minute later.
Action group Kick Out Zwarte Piet is planning to protest in twelve different cities in November against the use of blackface makeup and costuming often adorned by white actors portraying Sinterklaas's helper. The activists consider Zwarte Piet in his traditional form a racist stereotype. On Thursday there were protests in Apeldoorn and Deventer calling for Zwarte Piet to remain in the blackface costume seen mainly over the last hundred years, and which some say is adhering to Dutch tradition.
An unusual delivery of live fish caught the attention of Amsterdam police hook, line, and sinker. Investigating officers found the aquatic animals swimming around hidden compartments filled with liquid cocaine.
It started on Sept. 4 when police officers on stakeout witnessed dozens of boxes being loaded into vans at Schiphol airport. The delivery vehicles left a holding area for animal cargo and traveled to a storage facility in Amsterdam where the boxes were offloaded, police said.
The partial collapse of the AFAS Stadion roof earlier this month was caused by the downward force of heavy winds. The stadium, home of Alkmaar-based football club AZ, will now undergo a renovation in which roughly 75 percent of the roof will be renovated or replaced.
The Dutch Safety Board found two more fractures and two compromised places in the roof of the AFAS stadium in Alkmaar, the Safety Board said in an interim report. These fractures and suspected cracks may lead to parts of the remaining roof collapsing. "They represent an acute risk", the Safety Board said, NOS reports.
When the AFAS stadium in Alkmaar was built, the future installation of solar panels on its roof was not taken into account, Anna Lambrechts, commercial director of Sunprojects - the company that installed around 1,700 solar panels on the stadium's roof in 2015 - said in a video used as promotional material, AD reports.
The video was filmed four years ago. It was taken offline after the roof of the AZ stadium partially collapsed in a storm on Saturday.
A report raising concerns about fire safety and structural integrity of AFAS stadium that was released shortly before the new stadium opened in 2006, was ignored by the Alkmaar city council and office of mayor and aldermen, former alderman Victor Kloos said to De Stentor.
"We warned about it at the time. In the meantime, I have requested all documents, investigations and reports from that time from the municipality", party leader Kloos of OPA - currently the largest party in the Alkmaar city council - said to the newspaper.
One person was killed, and separately a portion of the AFAS Stadion roof collapsed as heavy winds gripped the Netherlands on Saturday. Wind gusts in IJmuiden, at the North Sea coast, even topped 104 kilometers per hour.
A bicyclist died at about 2:30 p.m. in Linschoten, Utrecht, when the heavy winds toppled a tree, which sent it crashing down on a bike path along the Haardijk. The tree struck the victim, a 58-year-old man from Lopik, a town 15 kilometers away from the accident.
Thursday was a tumultuous day for Dutch football in the third Europea League qualifying rounds. While AZ failed to score a single goal against FC Marioepol despite having 20 shots, Feyenoord managed to score three goals in 10 minutes against Dinamo Tbilisi. The AZ vs FC Marioepol match ended 0-0, the Feyenoord vs Dinamo Tbilisi one ended 4-0.
NS is running fewer intercity trains on Friday due to the heat. Prolonged exposure to the high temperatures means that trains need to be serviced more often, and that the maintenance takes longer to perform, a spokesperson for the Dutch rail company said to AD.
YouTube removed the Regionaal Archief Alkmaar video channel over "hate speech". The archive channel featured video footage of the Second World War and other archive footage of Alkmaar and its surroundings. The removal may have to do with the fact that Nazi symbols like swastikas can be seen on the WWII footage, NH Nieuws reports. The channel now seems to be back online.
Nearly 18 years ago, Dutch kickboxer Coen de Nijs was shot and killed in the center of Alkmaar. This week police finally came one step closer to solving the crime.
A 46-year-old Estonian man was arrested on Tuesday, suspected of playing a role in the street killing. The man admitted to being involved in the incident, police said in a statement on Thursday.
The murder happened on June 22, 2001, when De Nijs was shot from behind while he was near the corner of Zevenhuizen and Gasthuisstraat in the Noord-Holland city. De Nijs died at the scene.
The Dutch government is preparing more housing and counseling for victims of human trafficking, Minister Hugo de Jonge of Public Health, Welfare and Sports announced. A total of 36 new reception centers will be opened in five municipalities this year.
While most polling stations for the Provincial States elections opened smoothly and on time on Wednesday morning, there were a few problems. One polling station in Alkmaar is closed due to a fire on Wednesday morning. A number of polling stations in Amsterdam opened over an hour late. And residents of a Rotterdam neighborhood didn't get their voting passes.
Utrecht scores the best of all Dutch cities when it comes to sustainability, according to a study by Natuur & Milieu published on Tuesday. Amsterdam came in a close second, followed by Alkmaar.
Police arrested two suspects in connection with the kidnapping of a young woman from a train station in Eindhoven. A 31-year-old Alkmaar man was taken into custody on October 26, which police made public on Friday. A 45-year-old was also in custody according to police.
The victim was abducted and pulled into a car by two men in the early morning hours of May 27. She was then kept captive for hours in a house in Son en Breugel, where police say she was raped. When she was released hours later, she immediately called authorities, according to a police report.
Nearly 40 people were hurt in a pileup on the A9 near Velsen-Zuid on Sunday morning. Around 10:30 a.m. a car crashed into the guardrail, after which around 10 other vehicles collided with each other. The entire highway in that direction was closed for 5 hours, NU.nl reports.
Most of the injured people were treated at the scene of the accidents. Only two had to go to hospital.
Hundreds of motorists caught behind the accident, were stuck on the highway for hours. During the afternoon, police officers helped these motorists in turning around and guided them off the highway.
A family heirloom accidentally sold on a King's Day flea market, has been tracked down. The painting is now back with its original owner, NOS reports.
An 11-year-old girl from Blokker sold the painting at a Hoorn flea market with her father for only 5 euros. She had no idea that the painting was precious to her mother. And the father did not know his ex still wanted it, as had been in his attic for some time.
