Do it right: Up the $100-M stadium ante by $50M

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/03/2010 (5663 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The $100-million question, my friends, is what exactly does that kind of money buy these days?

It certainly won’t pay for anything close to the stadium the folks in Regina are talking about, with its retractable roof and $430-million-plus price tag. And that’s fine. Winnipeg and the Blue Bombers were never going to get a football stadium on that grand scale. But building a facility that costs less than a quarter of what your rival neighbour is putting together, well, that can give a province an inferiority complex. Or at least a bad case of stadium envy.

The latest news on the development of a new football stadium at the University of Manitoba has to be alarming in terms of what will be delivered.

The stadium originally proposed by David Asper is off the table. It was to be a 30,000-seat, fully enclosed bowl with overhead coverage for more than 80 per cent of its seating, a Blue Bombers Hall of Fame, state-of-the-art video boards, top-end concessions and a fan tram to deliver customers from parking lots to the facility, all built with $100 million of private money and $35 million of public funds,

Instead, a stadium built entirely with public funds, reportedly to come in at around the $100-million mark, is on the verge of becoming reality. Already there’s a groundswell of "doing things on the cheap" from football fans and questions about how scaled down the new concept will be from the original.

Word began leaking out late last week that Premier Greg Selinger, fearing the proposed stadium package at the U of M campus was about to die on the vine, is poised to announce the start of construction on a scaled-down stadium any day now.

Negotiations between the Blue Bombers, the province, the City of Winnipeg, Ottawa and Asper’s Creswin Properties are ongoing to make sure a stadium gets built. What that ballpark will look like is up in the air as the Bombers and the province continue to haggle over the details.

The football club struck a deal with Creswin back in March 2007 to swap control of the team for a major financial contribution in building a new stadium. The project was underpinned by Creswin’s retail concept, to be developed on the current stadium site.

The high-end Elms mall struggled to get off the ground and Creswin asked for a 12-month extension last October. Now it appears the Elms development will need more time and, with Canad Inns Stadium in need of major cash to keep it operational, Selinger has decided a new stadium can’t wait.

On one hand, football fans should be thankful a new stadium is on the way, but on the other, fearful that they’re going to get a stripped-down basic model instead of the Cadillac they were hoping for.

Selinger will, no doubt, face all kinds of pressure with this endeavour. So here’s a little from this corner. Manitobans are going to spend the next 50 years or so watching football games here, so if you’re going to do it, do it right.

In for a $100 million? Why not in for $150 million?

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca