Halifax building CFL-Sized stadium

Exactly it was for the Commonwealth games , the Queen opened the games, thousands of people came from all over the world.... Halifax could have had the same infrastructure and event but Kelly pissed on FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS and Nobody raised an eyebrow or said a word.

There is no way in HELL that 60 to 90 million dollars buys you a 25 000 seat stadium, that is fantasy. 60 million is what the community center in Bayers lake cost LOL ! If you can build 25 000 seat stadiums in Canada for 60 million, you'd have a waiting list of customers... starting with Hamilton, Winnipeg and Quebec city.

So what happens when Kelly finds out its really 175 million , he's gonna pull a Commonwealth and back out again and say It's more than he was told ? That's the biggest problem in Halifax city hall. No one can count, explains all the problems.

Those soccer games can be held two hours away in Moncton for Zero dollars. You realize that 2 hours is about the time it takes to get home from Skydome or Molson Stadium right except its in traffic or on the subway and train.

But good luck with the funding request :slight_smile:

Fixed your post Earl.

Hamilton lost the 2010 CWG to Delhi. Hamilton’s city council tried to run Bob Young out of town, and would have lost the TiCats were it not for David Braley and Bob Young. Hamilton built an arena for an NHL team 25 years ago and is still waiting for the puck to drop.

Hamilton makes every city in Canada look good, including Halifax.

Moncton built a 10,000 seat stadium for $20 million. How much will it cost to expand Moncton’s stadium to 25,000 seats?

Take that expansion cost, add $20 million and there’s the low end of what a CFL stadium costs. If Moncton can afford that, then Halifax can afford it too.

And if Halifax can’t afford it, then Moncton can’t afford it either.

  1. Moncton is not Halifax. A different city in a different province two hours away. Saying that Halifax should just support Moncton for the FIFA tournament is like saying Calgary shouldn’t host Grey Cups anymore because Edmonton is just 3 hours up HWY2 and they have a 60,000 seat stadium. No Calgarian would ever say that.

Haligonians want what is best for Halifax, Monctonians want what is best for Moncton.

Are Monctonians going to say “We don’t want to host the Brier/World Junior Hockey Championships/Loney Bowl/CIS Final 8 because they can hold those in Halifax in a bigger arena and heck, its only 2 hours away” Of course not.

2)It won’t be for zero cost. The requirement is for a 20,000 seat stadium. So the cost might not be substantial, but it is’t zero either.

3)As far as the FIFA tournament goes, Halifax could build a cheap (like Stade Saputo in Montreal) 10,000 seat stadium for $15 million and expand it to 20,000 just like Moncton. But Halifax would be a better venue because Moncton has a track & field stadium, which is inferior to purpose built soccer/football stadiums for soccer/football games.

So Moncton is really just $15 million ahead of Halifax in terms of hosting the tournament.

:roll:
  1. The Canada Games Centre is on Lacewood in Clayton Park, not in Bayers Lake. Maybe only 1km away, but still…

2)It cost $45 million, not $60 million according to cbc

  1. If you’re going to put a LOL in your post, you should probably make sure you haven’t made any factual errors (see 1 & 2 above) Your $15 million mistake would practically pay for a 10,000 seat track & field stadium.

Canada Games Center 45 million dollars for the building envelope to Ellis Don the land was 12 million then there were hundreds of orders packaged by the city purchased seperately that totalled millions of dollars, you can find some of them here.

http://www.halifax.ca/procurement/TenderRFPAwards.html total price was around 60 million dollars plus services.

I'm serious you can't build a 25 000 seat stadium for 60 million dollars. Not even close.

I'll tell you one better, the best place to build a stadium in Nova Scotia would likely be somewhere around between the airport and Truro. Where it is more central and has a better chance of pulling attendance from NB and Cap Breton, not to mention the price of Land in HRM for something like this makes it even less doable.

There’s only about $3 million dollars on that page you linked to. But how do you know that those items aren’t included in the $45 million? And I doubt the land cost $12 million because the Centre was built on the Mainland Commons. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t HRM own the Mainland Commons?

But if you are right, your allegation of $15 million of hidden costs would be a pretty big story. Isn’t Peter Kelly in hot water over $400,000?

You should contact the media with your proof, they’d love to run with a story about $15 million in secret hidden costs.

You can’t build a nice 25,000 seat stadium for $60 million. But Stade Saputo in Montreal will end up with 20,000 seats for $40 million total. It will be on the cheap end of soccer stadiums in MLS, at the other end is New York’s $200 million 25,000 seat Red Bull Arena.

But if Montreal can build a 20,000 seat stadium for $40 million, I don’t see why Halifax can’t build a 25,000 seat stadium for $60 million. Again, you can’t build a nice stadium for $60 million, but it would probably be a more comfortable stadium than Molson Stadium in Montreal.

And it isn’t a permanent stadium, but Empire Field in Vancouver was built for $14 million. So there’s another example of a 25,000 seat stadium for under $60 million. How much would a permanent version cost? I don’t know, but probably around $30 million. It wouldn’t be as nearly as nice as Winnipeg’s new stadium, but according to David Braley, the Lions pretty much broke even at Empire Field. So to a certain extent, even a permanent Empire Field is a viable CFL stadium.

But Halifax probably wouldn’t need to pull attendance from NB or Cape Breton. There are about 500,000 people within a 1 hour drive of Halifax, and that is enough for a CFL franchise. You’ve still got to work to get bums in the seats, but that’s a big enough market to get 25,000 a game.

Over 40% of Nova Scotians live in HRM. Over 50% live withing a 1 hour drive of the HRM, so it would be silly to build a stadium anywhere else in NS besides HRM. You build a stadium where the people are, and in NS, that means the HRM.

The best place for a 25,000 seat stadium in NB isn’t Moncton because fewer than 20% of NBers live in Moncton. NB’s stadium should be in Sussex. Sussex is about an hour from each of NB’s 3 main cities and there is probably more than 400,000 people that live less than 1 hour from Sussex.

Sussex for a NB stadium makes more sense than Enfield for a NS stadium.

HRM has set up a stadium link on the municipal website.
[url]http://www.halifax.ca/stadium[/url]

Again your taking bits and pieces to make it fit the mayors pipe dream. Saputo Stadium cost 14 million dollars in 2008 and the expansion is BUDGETED at 40 million dollars (Will likely cost more) so 54 million dollars for a 20k seat stadium not including land (land is on loan)… and that is not a CFL SIZED STADIUM. The thread titled says Halifax building a CFL sized stadium, that is not what Saputo stadium is. A football stadium is a lot more expensive to build than a soccer stadium because end zone seats in football are pretty much useless, so you need much bigger structures to handle the extra height for sideline to sideline seats.

Thread title should be Halifax studying 20k seat soccer stadium. Good luck with it…

:roll: I'm just pointing out the inconsistencies and errors in your posts like this one...

Well, according to the Montreal Gazette, the budget for the expansion is 23 million

Plans for a $23-million expansion of the stadium and surrounding facilities have been unveiled, and will see seating capacity increased from 13,034 to 20,341 by the time the Impact joins North America's premier league in 2012.
Do you have a source for your $40 million budget? I think you mistook the stadium's total cost of $40 million for the expansion budget. According to the Montreal Impact, the cost of Saputo Stadium was $17 million. 17 + 23 = 40.

I brought up Saputo Stadium because you said that a 25,000 seat stadium couldn’t be built for $60 million. Saputo will be a $40 million 20,000 seat stadium, which extrapolates to a $50 million 25,000 seat stadium.

:roll: Not necessarily. Here's a picture of a stadium where a CFL team broke even last year...

http://buyric.com/lifestyle/files/2011/01/empire-field-bc-lions-1.jpg

And here’s a picture of a CFL game in Moncton…

http://media.greenradio.topscms.com/images/c6/da/f2bd275e42e2ac72d5145a5fe8df.jpeg

Notice the common theme? People sitting in endzone seats.

Yes, yes good luck with it ! :thup:

Just have to say it would be sweet if Halifax did build a stadium, even at 20,000 capacity, if it’s done right it wouldn’t take much to add an extra 5 000. Having a stadium, especially a new one, makes it more feasible for any potential ownership. A community owned team would be really sweet but how does one even get that off the ground?

I believe the Edmonton Eskimos, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Winnipeg Blue Bomber are all community owned, so one would think it would be doable. Heck, so are the Packers.

My basic understanding is that you start up a non-profit organization (there is a lot more to non-profit, and type there of, companies, trusts, organizations, etc than most people realize. The nice thing is that these types of organizations get different tax exemptions depending on exactly how they are set up (“non-profit” varies on the % of profit they can bankroll depending on how the company is set up). From there you can raise funding in various ways…concerts, sanctioned raffles, door/teledrives, etc. Another method which gathers a lot of money is when you actually make it public by selling shares. There are different ways of doing this…non-transferable, non-vote, listed, etc. What you would probably do is issue say 500,000 shares, and have essentially an IPO at at say 100 bucks a share (it is not actually an IPO, more like a stock release / issuing). So, now you sold 100k shares for 10million bucks, and you have a bankroll. The club still has 4/5ths of the shares though, which the board controls. Share holders typically have a vote on the board…1 share = 1 vote. The only vote that really matters is the 1st one though, as the board basically controls its own destiny after that, as they retain voting majority.

That is a really basic overview anyways.

Oh, and BTW, I am from Saskatchewan, but I would love to buy a share in Halifax, or many other places, if this were to happen.

You know, this really has me thinking. What is stopping a club from becoming registered on the stock market? This would be rather interesting....a truly publicly traded company. That would be really interesting. A club like the Riders would be worth a fair amount because of the merchandise they move. The Als would be up their because of their recent success and stable management. Dallas Cowboys would be worth a pile, but a PILE more if they were winning, motivating ownership to make moves. The Yankees would be worth a ton.

Interesting concept actually. I wonder if it has ever been done somewhere.

MLSE was publicly traded under Harold Ballard, but I believe rule changes in the NHL put a stop to it. I think this could lead to hostile takeovers, something leagues would frown upon…

hmm…interesting, thanks.

One must also note that as long as a company holds 50+ percent of the shares a hostile takeover is impossible. you could issue 10million shares, and only make a public offering of say 3 million, with the Corporation retaining the rest. Now they would always be able to sell more of those if they wished, which could put them in a situation where they no longer hold voting majority, but still be the principle holder…unless someone bought up enough of the shares that the Corporation foolishly sold.

Want something that would work, here it is.
Build the stadium (could be anywhere) in phases.
Moncton for example.
They already build lets say phase one a permanent stadium along the side lines.
To expand it, fill the rest with temporary seatting.
As expansion continues, everytime a new phase would go up that is permanent, a portion of the temporary seating is removed.

A second way to do it is to build the stadium long the side lines more costly then build the end zone seating less costly.
A perfect example would be to combine a solid concrete stadium with great seating and private boxes along the sidelines and then build the endzone seating the same way they did for TD Waterhouse Stadium in london.
You can place 10 000 end zone seats (5000 at each side for less than 8 mil). End zone seats are set at a cheap ticket price anyway so you will get a bleacher seat that set at a good price.
Right now Winnipeg and sask have bleacher seating at there end zones and people have no problem paying for them and filling them as well.

it is not the easy to simply build a concrete structure. You would need to rip out the entire sideline to build it, because you need space. And to save money, you would start this in the spring (to avoid hoarding and heating), meaning you loose that sides seating revenue for a year. Also, 8 Million would not complete 1 sideline. That is simply unrealistic. The bathrooms and modest concession booths along with associated cabling would cost that alone, for 1 side, 1 concord.

You need to build it properly or people will not return after a couple of seasons. This means a concrete stadium, with 2 levels of bathrooms and concords per side. Endzone seating can be done down the road if desired. Worry about filling the 30 000 seats that this would provide.

[url]http://www.thechronicleherald.ca/Front/9020468.html[/url]

depopulationINC
I think that you misread what I put because we are somewhat on the same page.
The 8 million is what it would cost to get a stadium simular to the football stadium in London Ontario which is what would be used for end zone seating. It would be a fast way to bring a 15000 seat concrete stadium up to 25000 seats at the most affordible costs.
My point is that all you need to get started for a CFL stadium with all the bathrooms consessions, and private boxes is a 15000 -20000 seat concrete stadium. 15000 - 20 000 seats may not be enough to land you a CFL francise, but the affordible solution is the London Ontario football stadium style seating for the end zones which would cost less than 10 mil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD_Waterhouse_Stadium

This is it here.

[url=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/2764994491_a257b85dd4.jpg]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3156/276 ... b85dd4.jpg[/url]

and here

[url=http://v23.lscache8.c.bigcache.googleapis.com/static.panoramio.com/photos/original/15657209.jpg]http://v23.lscache8.c.bigcache.googleap ... 657209.jpg[/url]