newswatch
photo by Darrol Hofmeister
The Amateur Question
A domed stadium means spin-off costs for small-scale sports
by Stephen LaRose
The models and artist conceptions look impressive. Instead of the rainbow checkerboards at Mosaic Stadium, the stands are hunter green — the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ colour. There’s no open end to the street, nor is there a section showing how the stands are shoehorned into Regina’s street grid.
They show how the Roughriders have entered The Big Time. Their new home will be a palatial affair compared to the cramped, outmoded and archaic Mosaic Stadium at Taylor Field.
Just as the Riders grew from a community project to a corporate entity, they’re shedding their old cocoon.
The government’s proposal, unveiled March 1 at the Hotel Saskatchewan, calls for a $430 million retractable-roofed stadium that would house from 33,000 to 50,000 to watch Rider games. The new facility will need at least 31 big-paying dates annually to break even.
A second proposal that would involve 10 Saskatchewan First Nations bands independent of the Saskatchewan Indian Gaming Authority, the Métis Nation of Saskatchewan, and the Florida-based Seminole Nation’s gaming arm, is even grander — a retractable-roofed, 55,000-seat stadium, a massive Hard Rock Café and casino and a 500-suite hotel.
The Riders can offer only 12 events at the maximum (one pre-season and nine regular season games, possibly a home playoff game and/or a Grey Cup).
To be viable, the new stadium needs many other events — rock and country music tours, Wrestlemanias, tractor pulls, motocross, international soccer matches, NFL exhibition games — bringing in The Big Bucks.
Here’s something else to consider: the Roughriders currently share Mosaic Stadium with the University of Regina Rams, the Regina Thunder of the Prairie Junior Football Conference, amateur and high school soccer, Regina’s high school football clubs and Regina Minor Football.
If and when the Riders move into their new digs, it’s uncertain and unlikely that Regina’s youth and amateur clubs will be able to follow — even if they want to.
Mosaic Stadium gets about 200 uses a year by many groups, says Ward 8 city councillor Mike O’Donnell. While nobody’s calling for the wrecking ball — yet — most discussions about the area around 1910 Piffles Taylor Way suggests the stadium site will be converted into a housing project after the dome opens.
What happens to minor and amateur football and soccer?
Not much, says O’Donnell, a former executive director of Regina Minor Soccer and former Regina high school sports commissioner.
“I would think there would be a social responsibility for [Regina city council] to carry forward,” he says. “We would be saying, ‘These are the previous facility’s users and they must be accommodated,’” probably through subsidizing their rents, he continues. That would leave the local users vulnerable to scheduling conflicts. Major events need days to set up and take down equipment.
Just ask Dick White, the University of Regina’s athletics director. Forget Thanksgiving bookings, City Hall officials told him and other amateur football representatives during scheduling meetings almost four years ago. Instead of the Rams playing to four thousand fans on a Saturday night, more than 80,000 people — from the city, the Prairies, the north-central U.S. and, in Charlize Theron’s case, from Hollywood via a local film shoot — paid from $85 to $1,000 to see the Rolling Stones at Mosaic.
Originally booked for one show, the Stones played two sellout performances, the largest grossing concert event in Canadian entertainment history. The city, the Riders and Regina’s business community made a heck of a lot more money off Sir Mick and co. at Mosaic than they would have from a Rams game.
With AC/DC last year (Aerosmith and ZZ Top were scheduled but cancelled after Steven Tyler’s injury) and Bon Jovi this summer, Regina is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s answer to Branson, Missouri — a place for old acts to grab one last big payday before retirement. The proposed new stadium will be built with an eye towards the big tours.
If White isn’t enamored with Mosaic Stadium’s charms, he’s much less so for the proposed new stadium, for other reasons. Playing off-campus doesn’t create a community atmosphere the Rams desire for their home games. While the Rams pay a ‘reasonable’ (in White’s words) rent at Mosaic, it’s not likely they would at a new domed facility. When Canada’s university football championship, the Vanier Cup, is held at Hamilton’s Ivor Wynne Stadium — a facility about Mosaic Stadium’s vintage and size — organizers are charged about one-third the rent they pay when it’s held at Toronto’s Rogers Centre.
As a marketing tool — for the business community as well as for recruiting players — it’s probably better for the Rams to play in a 5- to 10,000-seat facility, along the lines of the Rams’ archrivals, the University of Saskatchewan Huskies, who play at the on-campus Griffiths Stadium, says White. But the cost to convert the Rams’ current artificial turf practice site would be about $5 million (including washrooms and a concession area).
Another idea, says O’Donnell, would be to build a new practice facility for the Roughriders at Evraz Place. “The Roughriders wouldn’t be able to use the dome that often for practice if it were hosting concerts or trade shows,” he says. The field would also house minor and amateur football. It would be close enough to the exhibition grounds’ concessions and washrooms for fans’ convenience, and about 5,000 seats, and some other equipment, could be cannibalized from Mosaic to make a suitable place for high school and amateur football and soccer fans.
Both those proposals — along with adding more lights and artificial turf to a couple more of Regina’s minor sports fields — will drive up the cost for the new stadium by $7 to $10 million, albeit in a hidden way. With three levels of government, the Roughriders and the private sector probably maxed out to pay for the dome, who will pay for projects benefitting amateur sports? Three levels of government are currently paying $1.5 million for new artificial turf on Leibel Field, as well as minor football and soccer leagues — the field’s primary users.
“The same people who would sponsor or provide money to a domed stadium would not be the same people who would donate to amateur football or soccer,” says O’Donnell. “It’s a different level of dollar support, plus you have parents and grandparents who want to help out their kids. A little bit of money goes a long ways for them.”
“Don’t get me wrong; I think the dome is a good idea,” White concludes. “We’ve got a few years to think about how it will affect other user groups, and we should be spending our time wisely, planning for the future.”
WHAT ONE DOME WILL GET YOU
Huge sums of money are just up and disappearing every day. Harper’s Conservatives turned a surplus into a $53 billion deficit. The States staunched their hemorrhaging economy with a trillion greenbacks. Could we be so inured to large dollar figures that sinking nearly half a billion into a sports stadium seems like small potatoes? No wonder everyone’s so giddy at the prospect. It sounds like we’re getting a dream facility for pocket change. Of course, one could argue there are a few other things that could benefit from this abundance of enthusiasm and investment. Here’s a look at how far the projected price of a retractable dome stadium ($431 million) will get you with some other pressing infrastructure priorities. /Paul Dechene
HOUSING
After pointing out that coming up with a number is difficult since affordable housing comes in so many different forms, a representative from the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation says that, on average, building a new unit of affordable housing costs about $230,000.
After pointing out that coming up with a number is difficult since affordable housing comes in so many different forms, a representative from the Saskatchewan Housing Corporation says that, on average, building a new unit of affordable housing costs about $230,000.
1 retractable dome stadium = 1,874 affordable housing units.
SCHOOLS
The Regina Public School Board estimates building an elementary school these days will run about $15 million. All instructional salaries in 2008 cost them $89,457,462 while the school system’s entire budget was $166,030,193.
1 retractable dome stadium = 28.7 elementary schools, 4.8 years worth of teacher salaries or 2.5 years worth of education for the entire public school system.
LIBRARIES
The Regina Public Library currently has 94,136 registered patrons. Its entire 2008 budget came in at $26,893,000.
1 retractable dome stadium = 16.02 years of library operations.
ROADS
During the city election, potholes were among the top complaints of voters. Everyone seemed to agree we needed to spend more on road rehabilitation, preservation and maintenance than the $18 million we spent in 2009. Nigora Yulyakshieva, manager of roadways preservation, agrees. “To keep our infrastructure how it is today,” she says, “we need to double our budget.”
1 retractable dome stadium = 23.9 times the budget for roadway rehabilitation and maintenance.
WASTE WATER TREATMENT
Thanks to changes the federal government made to The Canadian Environmental Protection Act and The Fisheries Act, Regina must expand its wastewater treatment facilities significantly over the next five years. According to the proposed Water and Sewer Utility budget for 2010, the city needs to make capital investments in the range of $130 million per year between now and 2015 to achieve this.
1 retractable dome stadium = 3.3 years of investment into improving our water.