Add the Vancouver Whitecaps to the list of teams looking to build a new stadium, maybe, possibly, if the price is right:
The Major League Soccer club is in talks with the City of Vancouver about the construction of a stadium at the PNE fairgrounds site, said Whitecaps CEO and sporting director Axel Schuster.
“The club’s ownership has always been clear on their goal of constructing a purpose-built stadium and the importance of a suitable venue to both fan experience and financial performance for any professional sports franchise,” said Schuster in a statement on Friday.
The talks are in the early stages and Schuster did not disclose any other details, but said the club is looking forward to continuing its “constructive engagement” with the city.
The Whitecaps are currently renters at the province-owned B.C. Place, where the CFL’s B.C. Lions are the primary tenant, so surely they wouldn’t mind a stadium of their own. Whether they would welcome the construction debt that would come with it is another story: Schuster didn’t reveal anything about how much a new stadium would cost or whether that “constructive engagement” — interesting choice of that term, by the way — would include seeking public subsidies, something that is significantly less common in Canada than the U.S., though by no means unheard of.
Meanwhile, Schuster added that he’s simultaneously talking with B.C. Place operator PavCo about continuing on under a “different type of lease” after their current one expires later this year. If the Whitecaps owners are just trying to get a better deal by warning they might consider building a stadium on their own, more power to them; if they’re trying to leverage one branch of government against the other, though, the city and the province might want to consider getting together on this to tell the team they’re not going to bid against themselves.
There are so many soccer stadium size vacant tracts of land in Vancouver the Whitecaps should have no trouble finding a site, near Abbotsford.
WWS??? Ah, the memories…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitecaps_Waterfront_Stadium
https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/waterfront-stadium-could-be-dramatic-beautiful-spectacular-province
https://www.whitecapsfc.com/news/vancouver-soccer-stadium-talks-derailed
Well, at least they haven’t threa-
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-whitecaps-new-stadium-1.7503283
In fairness to the owners, BC place is not an ideal environment for football (their kind). Playing under the dome might help attendance in March, but it doesn’t for most of the rest of the season.
Kerfoot and Mallett alone could fund an NFL stadium if they wanted to (the ownership group is worth north of $2Bn US, mainly from those two), so a 20,000 seat grass playing surface facility is easily within their reach.
The question is HOW the sausage is made, of course. At least last time they proposed a stadium (to be built over railyards near gastown) they were planning on paying for it themselves (their public ask, as I recall from 20 yrs ago, was simply a land swap and encroachment/air rights over the railyards).
Let’s hope this time it’s the same idea.