Mysterious principal owner Greg Kerfoot’s 2005 announced proposal to build a stadium north of Gastown, above Canadian Pacific Railway tracks, was a hot potato that Vancouver city council tossed into the unwelcoming lap of Port Metro Vancouver. The idea became redundant when the BC Liberal government decided in 2008 to renovate BC Place stadium.
The BC Liberals also granted $17.5 million toward a $31.5 million training centre in Delta as a last-ditch attempt to elect parachute candidate Wally Oppal in 2009. He lost on recount to independent Vicki Huntington. Delta municipal council eventually turned thumbs down to the John Oliver Park plan.
On September 15, New Westminster city council nixed the hasty proposal by the Whitecaps, consultant Gary Pooni and developer Ian Gillespie to bring a USL Pro farm team to Queen’s Park Arena. The Charleston Battery in far-flung South Carolina is the Whitecaps’ current USL farm team. The Whitecaps wanted their players to be in the home of the Hyack Festival’s anvil salute next year, but the planned fizzled.
“When you deal with public entities there’s processes, and these sometimes take time,” said Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi. “It’s something that we’ve accepted as part of what we need to go through to ensure we get the facilities we’re looking for.”
Transforming the aging ballpark with its grass diamond into a soccer stadium would have cost the city as much as $11.4 million. The Whitecaps brought no money to the table for the upgrade.
“From the outset they knew we were looking for a landlord-tenant relationship,” Lenarduzzi said. “There was never any uncertainty about that.”
USL Pro’s nearest team is in Sacramento, California, although the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers are pondering membership in the third division for their reserve teams in 2015.
Where to next? Possibly Surrey. But if talks get serious, locals will remember the nightmare that was the Surrey Glaciers of the Western Baseball League. The team evaporated after its one and only season in 1995. The taxpayer-funded renovation of Cloverdale’s Stetson Bowl rodeo arena for baseball should have cost $950,000 but ended up at $2.6 million. City hall found $113,000 meant for renovations was improperly diverted by the club into its operations.
Farther east in Abbotsford, the American Hockey League’s Heat left the $64.7 million Abbotsford Centre last spring with a $5.5 million contract buyout. Taxpayers spent $12 million subsidizing the Calgary Flames’ farm team since 2010. Now the rink is a white elephant.
Field goal
The Whitecaps and their training centre did find a home at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in September 2012, but that hasn’t been a smooth ride either.
The first sign of trouble at UBC was last fall when women’s national team head coach John Herdman moved his squad to the Fortius centre in Burnaby, which boasts accommodation, offices and indoor training beside high-quality synthetic turf fields. UBC was supposed to be the base for Canada’s 2015 Women’s World Cup campaign.
The Whitecaps do enjoy temporary locker rooms inside Thunderbird Arena, and Dhillon Field is their home away from BC Place, but the $10 million field house that was envisioned for a March 2015 opening won’t be ready for occupancy until the end of 2016, according to a September 3 UBC Properties Trust tender for construction management services.
Neither vice-president of students Louise Cowin nor athletic director Ashley Howard responded to an interview request.
The pitch planned for Matthews Field, next to Thunderbird Arena, has been cancelled. UBC’s Kavi Toor, associate director of facilities and business development, said Matthews is earmarked for a potential future housing development.
Lenarduzzi is downplaying the delays.
“The principle of what we’re doing out there hasn’t changed. There has been some movement where fields will go, where clubhouses will go,” he said. “There’s nothing that will change what we are ultimately looking for, and that is the facilities that were a part of the original plan.”
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