Stadium Stalemate

Posted December 6, 2011

The Phase 2 report has now been received and will be considered by city council on Tuesday evening.

As expected the primary focus is on questions of location and design. The consultant’s report, supported by the Steering Committee, has made a sensible argument that Dartmouth Crossing is the best location and has provided a design that meets FIFA requirements while allowing for possible future uses.

But the report is perhaps most noteworthy for what is not there. The more fundamental questions are ignored or are barely acknowledged:

  1. Where are the other sources of capital? No sponsor has been identified and neither of the other two levels of government has made a commitment. Clearly HRM cannot do this on its own. So to keep the project alive it is proposed that the Canadian Soccer Association be asked for a six month extension on Halifax’s decision to be a candidate.
  2. And what would happen if (surprisingly) this was granted? At the moment the cost to build is only estimated at a Class C level. This is useful for distinguishing alternatives but not for providing a firm sense of cost. Can the six month interval be used to improve the estimate? Yes, but it would require detailed design and materials estimates. Creating these would cost more than twice the amount of money already spent , and firms are unlikely to do the front end work needed to bid on a design/build contract on a project that may not happen.
  3. If a go decision was not made until mid 2012 it would increase the already substantial risk that the facility would not be ready in time for the 2015 event.
  4. The report continues to use event and attendance figures after 2015 that are highly speculative. The most useful possible resource would be experience at similar facilities in Canada but these seem not to have been researched. An inspection of the websites for those facilities reveals little event activity.
  5. Inexplicably the pro forma forecasts do not include the operating projections for major events. Acquiring the FIFA games will require $2,250,000 in cash and in kind services and significant special facilities. Other national and international events will have similar requirements in proportion to their attendance potential. Are those considered in the numbers?

It is to be hoped that HRM Council will not spend any more money in pursuit of the FIFA timetable. But perhaps a good case can be made for a community facility with 1,000 to 2,000 seats in the preferred Dartmouth Crossing location.

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  • A gentleman heading up a Atlantic Universities association talked with Jordi Morgan about the cooperation between the city and the universities in Halifax. My view you know but I would add that the City’s own Stadium Committee cannot seem to identify a gift from North America Development who offered land in a RFP . The Committee identified a parcel of North America’s land other then the quarry site.
    Mr. Black I don’t hear a business case of innovative ways of generating revenue for this idea. A City in Brazil has a shopping mall in the spaces under the stands of their new stadium . About half the teams in the NFL sell seat rights for their stadiums which allows the reservation of a seat for season ticket holders. This idea started with NCAA colleges which would give that right to alumni making donations for scholarship accounts. A quid pro quo.
    The City had a huge cost cutting opportunity with the Skating Oval . A skating Oval footprint can easily have a football field on it in the summer. I know the technology to make this happen. You go from the spring summer and fall being football and other field events. Winter you have the skating oval and a year round use of a facility. Sapporo Japan’s 1972 winter olympics speed skating oval has 30,000 seats and has been used for soccer games. Kazakhstan has a similar venue with 15000 seats but they don’t make use of the venue in the summer. If this city had its act together it they would have made Requests for proposals for the skating oval location . Five million dollars for a slab of concrete that could have been the base for a stadium in the future .

    Paul Taylor | December 15, 2011

  • I could not agree more with your comments. This is pie-in-the-sky. The “jocks” are talking CFL as a tenant. If a city the size of Ottawa cannot make it in the CFL, how can it happen in Nova Scotia.
    Keep up the inciteful analyses.

    Ron Gregor | December 7, 2011

  • It would be interesting to know how much it costs the city of Moncton to maintain their stadium. And, let’s face it, in twenty years most facilities will need extensive refurbishment and upgrades. If the stadium is to be in the 2000 seat category, I would suggest that St. Mary’s might be a good location with a refurbishment of its present facility. I don’t think that you can project a once-a-year event like the CFL game in Moncton into a season of pro football as a way to estimate the expected attendance and “profits”. The chances of having a winning franchise in a small market like we have in the Maritimes are remote, and it is only winning franchises that seem to be financially successful here.

    Ron Gilkie | December 6, 2011

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