A joint venture of South Korea’s Hyundai Engineering & Construction and the local El-Seif Engineering Contracting Company has been awarded an estimated $130m contract by Saudi Aramco to build sports facilities at the King Abdullah Sports City development near Jeddah.

The joint venture has been appointed to build an indoor sports hall with a seating capacity of 10,000 and an outdoor athletics stadium with a sectator capacity for 1,000 people.

The sporting facilities will be built adjacent to the 60,000-seat King Abdullah Sports City stadium, for which a joint venture of Belgium’s Six Construct and the local Al-Muhaidib Trading & Contracting Establishment was awarded a SR2bn ($533m) contract to build in September 2011.

The sports city scheme is being developed on behalf of the government by state oil major Saudi Aramco. UK-based Arup is the consultant on the scheme.

When King Abdullah Sports City was approved by King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud in February 2009, it was planned to cover an area of 9 square kilometres, 60km north of Jeddah alongside the Mecca-Medina highway. The original plans were for a 100,000-seat stadium and several other sporting venues and structures, including an indoor arena, grand mosque and outdoor athletics stadium, sports academy and aquatic centre among other structures. The project was downsized in late 2010.