A new ballpark would cost around $600M. We don't need something on the level of the University of Phoenix but it's to give you an idea.
I agree with Jack Todd for once. This article is so well put. I can't believe people are actually defending the decision to put more money into the place.
http://montrealgazette.com/sports/j...you-spare-another-quarter-billion-for-big-owe
The Big Owe is the gift that keeps on taking.
From its inception in the early 1970s well into the new millennium, the Big O has been a clown stadium, an ugly, ruinously expensive concrete stain on this city,
Got a spare dollar? If you do, the Olympic Stadium would be only too happy to swallow it for you.
From its inception in the early 1970s well into the new millennium, it has been a clown stadium, an ugly, ruinously expensive concrete stain on this city, a money-gorging rat-hole down which whole generations of weak-kneed, jelly-spined politicians have happily poured our hard-earned tax dollars.
It is civic folly taken to its illogical extreme, madness as a way of life. The Big O has been an accessory to murder in the death of the Expos and the debt left by the stadium is one of the reasons Montreal ceded its place as Canada’s first city to ghastly Toronto and yet the stade goes on gobbling vast sums of money, with no end in sight.
It’s as though we have chosen to share the island with an especially rapacious dragon. Every night, the dragon ventures down Mount Royal to munch another thousand citizens — but when we ask why this is allowed to go on, we’re told: “But we’ve already fed it so many people. If we stop now, all that will be wasted!”
It’s high time someone worked up the political courage to slay the dragon. Instead, the sad-sack Liberal government of Philippe Couillard has elected to pour “at least” $200 million into a new roof for an old debacle. In these parts, that “at least” translates to a minimum of 25 per cent of the original estimate — so figure $250 million.
Of course, we’re told it would also cost an astronomical sum to tear the beast down — but any figures emanating from the Olympic Installations Board are highly suspect. Originally created to rescue the stadium construction and the 1976 Olympic Games from Jean Drapeau’s bungling, the IOB has become a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Of course, they’re going to tell you it would cost a fortune to tear it down when their jobs would vanish in the dust of the stadium.
It’s unfortunate newly elected Mayor Valérie Plante has shown no more imagination than previous mayors and premiers going all the way back to Drapeau and Robert Bourassa. This has been a collective failure for decades and spilling its taint over all political parties, yet Plante gave the new roof an enthusiastic endorsement in a radio interview prior to her election. There is, however, more than ample time for sober second thought.
I would rather see this city spend half a billion dollars on a new ballpark than half that on a new roof. A new baseball stadium as the jewel of a development in the old Goose Village neighbourhood might, if it’s managed correctly, pay for itself through investment in the area and economic development. A new roof on an old folly will do neither, despite the wishful thinking emanating from the OIB and the provincial government.
Apparently, the proposed new roof would be retractable, in a sense. Not the kind where you push a button and 20 minutes later you’re looking at blue sky, but a roof that could be rolled back in a week or so to accommodate an event like the 2026 FIFA World Cup. So if you want to overlook FIFA’s tendency to make off with everything that isn’t nailed down while leaving host nations with the bills, sort of retractable might sort of work.
But we have already sunk at least $1.47 billion in the Big O. For that tidy sum, we have received four decades worth of headaches — and counting. I realize the equivalency is less than exact, but it would be far better to divert the funds for the roof to a new ballpark that would actually attract something to this city, rather than maintaining a highly dubious structure for another decade or two.
Now that the autocratic and secretive Denis Coderre is out of the picture, I have much more faith in businessmen Stephen Bronfman and Mitch Garber to create a workable baseball project in tandem with the city. I don’t believe in out-and-out public handouts for any pro sports facility, but there are ways these things can be done in the open, with mutual benefit to developers and taxpayers.
As for the alleged $700-million figure floated for demolition of the stadium, a Gazette investigation four years ago found all kinds of holes in the OIB’s preposterous numbers and quoted Kevin Callahan of the U.S. firm that tore down Yankee Stadium in New York for a cost of $23 million as saying: “I can’t imagine anything within a multiple of that (the $23-million figure) short of having a nuclear reactor underneath.”
There is no nuclear reactor at the Big O, but the place is radioactive. Surely, we have endured enough. This is a building that once shed a 60-tonne concrete block — I have spent thousands of hours within that structure and not once felt entirely safe.
I understand there is a sort of emotional attachment to the Big O. It’s like spending 40 years with a hated spouse — no matter how bitter the hatred, you miss them when they’re gone.
