Estadio Gerardo León Pozo

Guayaquil has two big grounds within walking distance of each other, and Capwell is the one that spent seven decades looking like it belonged to a different era than its neighbour. Opened on 21 October 1945 as the home of Club Sport Emelec, it carried the shape of a mid-century South American ground — low stands hard against General Gómez, Pío Montúfar, Avenida Quito and San Martín, the pitch boxed in on all four sides by the surrounding streets rather than open parkland.

What changed it was the 2014–2018 rebuild, a 17-million-dollar project that did not so much renovate the old Capwell as replace it stand by stand while Emelec kept playing there. The San Martín side, the oldest surviving structure, was restored rather than demolished; the rest went up new, with corner towers holding executive boxes, an LED lighting rig replacing the old floodlights, and a press centre built for sixteen radio positions and a television studio — infrastructure that has more to do with modern broadcast requirements than with anything the ground needed in 1945. Capacity had crept up gradually before that: past reconstructions in 1989–91, 1999 and 2006 took it from just over 21,000 toward 24,000. The 2014 project doubled it again, past 40,000.

Between 2013 and 2021 the ground carried a sponsor's name, Estadio Banco del Pacífico Capwell, though supporters and most records still refer to it by the family name attached to the site since the 1940s. It remains club property, run by Emelec rather than leased from the city, which is part of why the rebuild could proceed as a running renovation instead of a single closure-and-reopening.