February 5, 2024
Quebec to spend a fortune to repair the Olympic stadium roof
The government of Quebec today announced plans to repair the decaying roof of the Olympic Stadium, one of the iconic landmarks on the Montreal skyline, but the repairs will come at a whopping cost of $870 Million dollars.
Built in 1976 to host the summer Olympics, the stadium which is known to locals as “The Big O”, or “The Big Owe”, has barely been used since the Montreal Expos MLB baseball team packed up and left to become the Washington Nationals in 2005. On occasion, it has been used to host Montreal FC games when the weather is too harsh for their neighboring Saputo stadium which stands right next to the Olympic Stadium.
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Since its inauguration, the stadium has been a financial disaster that has cost the Quebec tax payer far more than was originally proposed. At first, the project was to cost $134 million to construct, but strikes and construction delays escalated these costs and by the time the stadium opened, the total costs had risen to $1.1 Billion dollars, and hadn’t yet been completed in full. By the time it was fully completed, the cost to tax payers had risen to a astronomical $1.6 Billion dollars.
The tower and retractable roof were not even completed in time for the 1976 Olympics for which it was built, and there have been a series of unfortunate events to take place during its history. Construction of the tower only resumed in the 1980’s. A large fire set the tower ablaze, causing damage and forcing a scheduled Montreal Expos home game to be postponed. Then, in 1986, a large chunk of the tower fell onto the playing field prior to another Expos game.
In 1991, support beams snapped and caused a massive concrete slab to fall onto the exterior walkway, and forced the Expos to play out their final thirteen home games of the season to opponents cities. The damage was so severe that the 1992 season was in peril and was only able to take place once structural engineers had deemed it safe. However, while the stadium was certified, the roof was declaimed dangerous and was therefore permanently closed.
A new Kevlar roof was removed in 1998, making the stadium open-air for the 1998 season at a cost $26 million dollars for the non-retractable opaque blue roof. In 1999, a large portion of the roof collapsed, dumping ice and snow on workers that were setting up for the annual Montreal Auto Show.
The stadium was finally fully paid off in 2006 – the year after it lost its baseball team.
“This monument is one of the cornerstones of economic and tourist development for Quebec, and the east end of Montreal, and it is being neglected,” Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx told reporters in Montreal Monday.
The new roof is expected to take four years to build and should last for an estimated fifty years. Currently, the stadium closes during the winter months due to fears that the roof could collapse again, under weight of snow and ice. The tower has also been under construction for the past few years to make much needed repairs.
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Proulx says demolishing the stadium would cost $2 Billion dollars and would be complicated by the fact that the STM metro lines run under the structure and because several businesses lease office space in the stadium’s tower.
In recent years, several plans have been explored to return Major League baseball to Montreal, and none have come to fruition. One of those plans involved the building of a new stadium in the Peel basin of Montreal’s Point Saint-Charles district. There were plans to split an MLB team between Montreal and Tampa Bay which the league quickly shot down and with it went plans to build a new baseball stadium in Montreal. As such, spending a further $870 Million dollars on yet more repairs to the Olympic stadium, is surely a tough pill for Montrealer’s to swallow.
