What to do with Montreal's infamous Olympic Stadium?

Montreal Gazette ^ | July 23, 2010 | Andy Riga

[Loyalist]

MONTREAL — No, apparently, you can't blow it up. And taking it apart would be very expensive and time-consuming.

So, the City of Montreal seems to be stuck with the ill-fated Olympic Stadium, an enigma and concrete representation of government incompetence, cost overruns and crumbling infrastructure, but also an iconic city symbol, a dramatic fixture on the skyline and a major draw for tourists.

It's a venue vacated by baseball's Montreal Expos who decamped for Washington, D.C., in 2004 and the CFL's Alouettes, whose new downtown digs at McGill University were recently expanded to seat 25,000.

The Als, however, do use the Big O periodically, including for the 2008 Grey Cup game, which drew more than 66,000 people to the stadium in Montreal's east end.

With a new roof back on the agenda (cost: about $300 million), the question — more than three decades after the stadium opened on July 17, 1976 — is: How do Montrealers make the best of it?

[Loyalist]

Whenever team owners and politicians try to sell people on the economic benefits of building a big shiny new stadium on the public dime, they should think about the Big Owe.

It took more than 30 years to pay off its $1 billion debt, its retractable roof didn't work when it went up 11 years late because the French architect who designed it failed to account for Montreal's heavy snowfall, and it's too far away from downtown for the convention crowd.

The fact that it's ugly as sin is the least of its problems. The city can't even afford to tear it down even though huge chunks of concrete keep falling off it.

If you build it, the money won't come. That's the lesson of the Big Owe that too many forget.

[se_ohio_young_conservative]

I remember watching the Expos play in that building on television and thinking..they would have been just as well off playing in an old cattle barn somewhere.

thats a crap hole

[rod1]

Flea market. Expensive one though.

[Perdogg]

I went to a game there in 1994. It’s actually a nice stadium, or it was then, plenty of natural ventilation eventhough it was July in a humid mid 80s.

It’s on Boulevard Pierre de Coubertin which is in bad part of town. I remember a little boy playing with a “ball” made up of balled up tape.

[ClearCase_guy]

Perfect metaphor for government spending: Too big, doesn’t work, you’ll never get rid of it, additional costs will constantly appear.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

City of Montreal seems to be stuck with the ill-fated Olympic Stadium, an enigma and concrete representation of government incompetence, cost overruns and crumbling infrastructure,

We have the same thing here. It's called the White House.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

Stadiums here in the states get demolished all the time, why is this different. Blow it up and haul away the pieces, how hard is that?

[Mr. Lucky]

...and it’s really, really, ugly.

[Excuse_My_Bellicosity]

It’s good to see that the groundskeeper still has a job there.

[VanDeKoik]

Worlds biggest greenhouse?

[ikka]

Answer is simple: rent out the right to destroy it!

For $10/day, you get a hard hat, clip-on steel toes that go over your shoes, and use of a jackhammer, cutting torch, front-end loader etc., supervised by a guy who knows how to run all the equipment safely.

It will be a huge tourist attraction - imagine, you can break up part of the floor, and keep a chunk of it to put on your desk or mantel.

[AU72]

Not unlike homes that put up solar thermal panels on the roofs in the ‘70s in New England.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Knock both ends out and advertise it as the world’s biggest drive through car wash.

[rickmichaels]

They should make it a summer-only venue. Take the ridiculous roof off which would make it a semi-outdoor stadium, put in natural grass (like BMO Field did), put Montreal's soon-to-be MLS team in there and move the Alouettes back there.

If not, implode the f***ing thing.

[shadeaud]

Should have used it as an alternative shelter for katrina victims. The Canadians would have been happy to use their socialize medicine and housing to care for them. What’s that you say, we couldn’t do that because of the border/// seems like it doesn’t affect the illegals from south of our border.

[rickmichaels]

The Canadians would have been happy to use their socialize medicine and housing to care for them.

No, we wouldn't have been happy.

[hc87]

It had the ambiance of a parking garage.

[Popman]

Geez, how hard is this?

If you need to spend 300 million to fix the roof just spend 300 million to tear the damn thing down and sell the land to some amusement park entity like Universal, Disney, Six Flags.

[CORedneck]

I remember back in1991, I did a trip to Canada and was driving between Quebec City and Toronto and saw this monstrosity from the highway !

From a distance, it was kind of cool !

[Cicero]

Sell it to the Sheikh of Dubai.