Merkur Arena (vormals UPC Arena)

Basic information
Merkur Arena is a soccer stadium located in Graz-Liebenau for 15.400 people in 27 sectors with a field size of 105x68 meters which is equipped with an undersoil heating system. The stadium was constructed out of 14.000 cubic meters of concrete and 1.250 tons of steel with a 11.000 square meter roof that weights 650 tons. The stadium is the home of the clubs "SK Sturm Graz" and "GAK" ("Grazer Athletiksport-Klub").
Right next to the stadium is the hockey rink "Eisstadion Graz-Liebenau", home of the ice hockey club "Graz 99ers", and a skating hall with a roof which houses a 1.410 square meter solar plant. This plant used to be the biggest solar project in Austria from its opening in 2002 to 2006.

History
In 1951 the soccer stadium "Bundesstadion Liebenau" was opened on the area which used to contain sports facilities of the Steyr Daimler Puch enterprise. The first game took place on July 9th 1951: Styrian soccer association vs Sunderland AFC. On September 10th 1970 the first game of the Austrian national team in Graz (0:1 against Yugoslavia) took place.
In December 1994 it was determined that the old stadium won't be renovated but a new stadium built instead. Construction began January 1995 and ended with an opening ceremony on July 9th 1997 with a game of Grazer AK (GAK) vs. Sturm Graz (0:4). This new "Arnold Schwarzenegger-Stadion Graz-Liebenau" stadium was named after the famous bodybuilder, actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger who was born in Thal near Graz.
In December 2005 discussions started as Arnold Schwarzenegger in his role as Governor of California refused a petition for mercy of death-row inmate Stanley Williams. Williams was executed on December 13th 2005 after being sentenced to death for four cases of murder which he disclaimed. While in prison he was nominated 9 times for the Nobel prize for authoring books intended to help disenfranchised youth. Because of these discussions Schwarzenegger officially demanded that the city of Graz stops using his name, especially for advertisements. Because of this his name was removed from the stadium in the night of December 26th 2005. The letters "Stadion Graz-Liebenau" remained in place. After this event Graz started to look for sponsors for the stadium. On February 18th 2006 the new name of the stadium was presented to the public: "UPC Arena"

UPC Telekabel won the sponsoring competition against other companies such as Therme Loipersdorf, TOMS and T-Mobile with a sum of more than 150.000 euro per year on a 10 year contract. UPC ("United Pan-Europe Communications"), a provider of Internet-, TV- and telephony-services in Austria, is a subsidiary of Liberty Global and part of the UPC Broadband division. UPC provides services to about 10 million customers in European countries such as Austria, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Ireland, Romania, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Slovenia. Even though their new logo was already made public in most of these countries this did not happen yet in Austria, which is why the stadium is still carying the old three-colored UPC logo. Update April 2009: The logo has recently been replaced and the stadium now also carries the "new" UPC logo. Update May 2016: "Merkur Versicherung" recently acquired the rights of naming the stadium so the arena was renamed to "Merkur Arena" in April 2016.

Approach
The area can be reached by public transport with tram line #4 to "Stadion Liebenau". By bike it's reachable via "Conrad-von-Hötzendorf-Straße" (take care!) or by following the R2 "Murradweg" until "Puchsteg", then turn east. If you come by car and don't want to look for free parking lots you can use the 600-car-garage below the stadium.

Cache
The original hideout was destroyed by construction works in 2020. In the replacement hideout the container got muggled quite often.
Now it's hidden at some distance and will hopefully survive a bit longer.