Construction work on the stadium being built for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics in Tokyo has been pushed back to 2017, Japanese Government officials announced this week.

Decision on who will design the new Japanese National Olympic Stadium is due in December. Deadline for bids in new design competition passed this Monday and now proposals are being evaluated.

But while Tokyo awaits the new design and budget, question of time frame arises. Land on which the old national stadium used to stand isn’t only clear, but by now it’s already covered with grass. That’s a strong signal of how long the deadlock has been ongoing.

Current plans of the Japanese government suggest breaking that ground in 2017, because in 2016 detailed documentation of the redesigned stadium needs to be delivered. This should still give Japan enough time to get the venue up and running before the 2020 Olympics, but any further delays may in fact challenge the tournament’s feasibility in Tokyo.

January 2020 is the IOC’s final deadline for delivery and stadium of this scale usually requires over 2.5 years to complete.

As we wrote earlier, in mid-July Japan scrapped the severely overpriced Zaha Hadid design. Reports later suggested it may have been the stadium’s scale alone that led to immense cost increase. Thus the final design will be downscaled to facilitate construction and assure budget is kept.