We often talked about getting new teams here and there. Everytime, the same problem emerged: But they have no stadium! Who will build the stadium? Who will pay such a big amount?
No later than this week, the Impact (Montreal's soccer team) announced it would move to an all new stadium to be built soon. It would be a 13 500 seats stadium that would cost... 15 millions$!
How can this be? How can you build a stadium for only 15 millions$? Or, in fact, if IT IS possible to do so, why can't we build one just like that in Halifax?
Okay, I know, 13 500 seats isn't enough. But let's say you add 12 000 seats. It would cost more. But there's no way that stadium price should jump to 70 M$.
3/10, trust me on this one 'cause I am in big construction here in Cowtown, you cannot build a stadium for 13K people for 15million, unless the land is donated and you are going absolutely bare bones on it, no not even then I think. This stadium would be so sparse in it's amenities it would make most University stadium look posh.......
.......and the jump from 15M to 70M is not to hard to accomplish once you begin to add order of magnitude logistics into it. Let me explain...lets say you have spectator A sitting 10 feet from the field, elevated 5 feet from ground, spectator B (sitting behind A) is 15 feet from the field and 7 feet off the ground. By theory the cost to build B's seat is greater than A's, C is greater than B and so on because your building UP as well as out. 13,000 people in two grandstands on either side of the field spread across the length of the field from say the 10 yard line to the opposite ten yard line will generate a grandstand 50 rows high. The cost to build row Row XX is expontentially bigger than row A (think inverted curve). Now let's add 12,00 more seats. Most of those can be added around the ends, tacked onto the sides of the existing grandstands. But before long you're at the endzoen, who the heck wants to sit there, and really 50 rows is not too high, so you begin to build out and up again, at the exponential cost factor. Seriously, blowing big bucks on construction of this nature is not hard to do.
I'm in construction in newfoundland but understandably I never considered building a football stadium before. Thanks for the insight redandwhite. Maybe you can start a thread about existing stadiums - when built, who built them, how much it cost, etc - if you have any such info. I worked in Calgary before, with an engineer who designed a lot of the saddledome - always interesting stories. too bad i don't have much long term memory tho.
I imagine that this would, shall we say, make a lot of soccer people perturbed in Toronto if the stadium at York never gets built and Montreal ends up having a better facility than Toronto. Toronto likes to think they have the best of everything in this country.
I've just dropped by Ballparks.com and seen that Molson-Percival stadium holds 20 004 seats! And we only have 20 002 people crowds! Which means we've not been sold out for 7 years like we first thought!
Damn! Someone please tell me it's because two blind guys come to the games with their dogs...
A minimum stadium can be built for less than $70 million. Dallas, Columbus, and Los Angeles have all gotten stadiums for Major League Soccer that seat in the area of 22-23000 at a cost of about $32-$35 million U.S. Like Redand white said, the cost is higher per seat as the seats get higher. That would mean that the stadium would have to be low to the field and encircle the field. With a CFL field being longer and wider than a soccer pitch, you would either end up with more seats or a shorter stadium. The bad part is that only about half of the seats would be between the goallines.
Why would anyone build a new stadium anyway? What you need to do is take a page out of Ted Rogers book. Let the government build a new stadium. Everyone will love it for about 5 years. At the first sign of a losing season by the MLB or CFL team, the media will start talking about what a crappy place it is, and how can anyone stand to watch a team of any kind play there.
Enter Ted. Need I say more?
Besides, the best stadium in the league are I Never Win in the Hammer. Again, let the city put up the bucks and work with what you get!
CFL owners need a bit more forward-thinking. MLS teams were not profitable until they started building new stadiums. It's an investment for the future.
CFL-size Hornet Field in Sacremento, with 22,000 seats, was built in the early 1990's for $1.5 million. It was basically just two grandstands with a grass field. No washrooms and beer and food was sold from outdoor tents. If you didn't mind using port-a-potties, that stadium was sure built for cheap!
I am in the construction feild too and I say it can be done under conditions.
First of all land is usually always donated to a new ball park. Even the land for hockey arenas is donated from what I have seen. But thats beside the point.
Yes, Redandwhite is on the ball and accurate when building up because your dealing with cranes, high labour costs, concrete pouring, ect.
There are other ways to build a stadium and build it right avoiding those high costs.
For example, look at the new 40 000 seat stadium proposal for Winnipeg at 140 million.
Its nice, but does a new city really need a fancy extras that come with it?
For Winnipeg the extras are needed because we are a exstablish CFL town, but for a expansion city like Halifax, London or Quebec the extras are not really needed at this time.
The $140 million also covers the costs of a very large parkade and and 2 giant arches going over the field as part of the covering.
Now even though Red is right, lets look at the alternatives.
-The new soccer stadium concept example. These stadiums are build at a fraction of the cost, can hold over 20 000, and have the consessions and bathrooms needed.
What more can we ask for.
-Next is the Empire stadium idea which was once home to the BC Lions. That stadium circled the field and was the same height evenly. So what if your not sitting between the goal lines, all the seats including the end zone seats are good.
You dont have to always build up to be good. There are people in Vancouver who wish Empire Stadium was still around.
-The kit stadium:
This type of stadium can be build, dismantled, moved, and rebuild again. It is not to get mixed up with a temporary stadium. There are companies that specialize in kit stadiums and are the cheapest and fastest way to get a stadium.
They do not come with bathrooms or consessions, but bathrooms and consession can be added to them easilly.
London Ontario has a kit style stadium so in a sence they are half way there. And yes, confortable seats can be added.
A kit stadium is also a fast and easy way to expand a current stadium.
-Lastly, itstead of building up, why not dig down. Most of the costs of new arenas are absorbed from building the bulk of it underground level.
Your thoughts?
Also where can we find a link to this new soccer stadium being build in Montreal?