B.C. Place, the baseball stadium that wasn't

Article content material

B.C. Place turned out to be a horrible place to play baseball, however concerns for the sport had been on the core of the stadium’s design.

Article content material

By the top of the Seventies, Vancouver wanted a brand new sports activities hub, that was clear. Empire Stadium, constructed for the 1954 British Empire Video games, was operating out of steam.

Article content material

And if you happen to had been to construct a brand new stadium, it was solely logical to contemplate future tenants. The B.C. Lions had been one. The Vancouver Whitecaps, among the best groups within the North American Soccer League on the time, was one other.

Then the thought of a Main League Baseball staff popped up.

“I believe one flows from the opposite,” Mike Harcourt, mayor of Vancouver within the early Nineteen Eighties after which premier of B.C. within the Nineteen Nineties, instructed Postmedia final week, forward of the stadium’s fortieth anniversary. “If we wished a baseball staff, we needed to cope with the climate.”

The climate in wet Vancouver was a large consider choosing a domed stadium, B.C. Sports activities Corridor of Fame curator Jason Beck mentioned. Individuals could really feel nostalgia for Empire now, however a completely outside stadium with numerous seats uncovered to the weather wasn’t ideally suited.

Article content material

“Individuals had gotten uninterested in Empire Stadium, going to a Lions or Whitecaps recreation and getting soaked,” Beck mentioned.

However there wasn’t a straight line from Empire to B.C. Place. Erwin Swangard, head of the PNE and former managing editor of The Vancouver Solar, wished to construct a brand new open-air stadium on the PNE.

He referred to as the idea the Multiplex, with a price of $163.5 million. Vancouver Mayor Jack Volrich additionally favored the thought.

However Harcourt and his TEAM colleagues on council thought downtown made extra sense. Premier Invoice Bennett additionally believed downtown was the place to be.

Simply as his father W.A.C. Bennett had remodeled the remainder of the province within the Fifties and Nineteen Sixties with massive initiatives equivalent to B.C. Hydro’s dams, Invoice Bennett had a imaginative and prescient to make over downtown Vancouver. He wished a brand new conference centre on Burrard Inlet, a world’s honest to remake the lands on the False Creek shoreline that Canadian Pacific was now not going to make use of for railyards, a speedy transit line … and a brand new stadium.

Article content material

Article content material

Starting from virtually the day the final interurban tracks operating from downtown to factors south and east had been ripped out in 1958, there was discuss that Vancouver and its suburbs wanted a restoration of mass public transit.

And with Vancouver successful the fitting to host Expo 86 — on a theme of transportation, no much less — a speedy transit line operating from downtown out to New Westminster after which, someday, Surrey, swiftly turned greater than a pie-in-the-sky concept.

Constructing a brand new soccer stadium close to downtown, subsequent to the lands slated for Expo, made an excessive amount of sense to Harcourt, who was a metropolis councillor from 1973 to 1980, then elected as mayor in 1980.

Throughout his time on council, as plans for Expo started to take form, Harcourt spoke up, insisting there be a long-term imaginative and prescient for large initiatives, to take heed of what had occurred in Montreal.

Article content material

Montreal mayor Jean Drapeau had claimed in 1970 that, “The Olympics can no extra have a deficit than a person can have a child” — just for the Olympics to run up a billion-dollar shortfall, one which wouldn’t be paid off till the late Nineteen Nineties.

“I used to be against a Montreal 1976 Olympics-type deficit. And the mayor on the time, Jack Volrich, had Vancouver on the hook for 25 per cent of the (Expo 86) deficit,” Harcourt mentioned. Bennett’s provincial authorities was additionally saying that the prices to host Expo could be low.

Harcourt merely didn’t imagine the figures the province was claiming.

So, as soon as he was elected mayor, he had the town arise for itself, appointing an all-party committee of George Puil, Harry Rankin and Could Brown, operating throughout the political spectrum, to barter with Grace McCarthy, the provincial cupboard minister in command of Bennett’s Expo plans.

Article content material

Town bought a deal they might dwell with, and a stadium, together with Expo.

So a stadium was coming, which brings us again to baseball. A bunch headed by Jim Pattison, supported by Molson Breweries, had been laying the groundwork with Main League Baseball.

However April, when baseball seasons begin, is wet in Vancouver. A domed stadium was an apparent want.

Constructing a concrete roof just like the Kingdome’s in Seattle could be too costly, so consideration turned to a brand new concept — an air-supported fibreglass-fabric roof.

The Pontiac Silverdome, dwelling of the Detroit Lions, opened in 1975, the primary sports activities stadium to make use of the expertise.

“The light-weight nature of the material made it cost-effective,” mentioned Brian Griffin, the long-time operations boss at B.C. Place.

Article content material

“With Vancouver’s local weather, it was state-of-the-art tech on the time. They checked out different designs, however when prices got here in, it all the time got here again to (air-supported roof).”

B.C. Place was designed by New York Metropolis’s Geiger Engineers, who additionally designed the Metrodome in Minneapolis, which opened two years earlier than B.C. Place, and was thought-about its sister stadium.

And though B.C. Place was primarily designed to be a soccer venue, a baseball diamond did match, if considerably awkwardly. The stadium did host a handful of pre-season main league video games over the primary decade or so of its existence, the final time in 1994.

At the moment, the Mariners had been contemplating enjoying as much as 15 video games a 12 months in Vancouver. They’d struggled since becoming a member of the American League in 1977, and the Kingdome wasn’t serving to.

Article content material

The final spherical of pre-season video games in 1994 noticed Griffin and his colleagues arrange a baseball discipline that mimicked the Kingdome’s structure.

“The one subject was the higher deck in a single nook would have caught out 9 inches over the sphere,” Griffin mentioned.

The Mariners didn’t find yourself chasing video games in Vancouver and as a substitute bought a brand new stadium, now referred to as T-Cell Park. The renovations made a decade in the past to B.C. Place primarily dominated out its suitability for baseball.

At a kind of early-Nineteen Eighties conferences, Harcourt recalled a dialog he had with then-baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

Kuhn instructed him that Vancouver and Jacksonville had been the 2 strongest enlargement candidates. However he needed to get two issues sorted out first.

Article content material

There have been groups struggling financially — regardless of sturdy attendance, most had been dropping cash within the early Nineteen Eighties — and he believed he needed to conquer the widespread use of medication by baseball gamers.

“He mentioned, ‘So give me a bit of time to repair that,’” Harcourt recalled. Then he chuckled.

“To this present day, medicine are nonetheless a problem. And so we went out of the operating after some time. And sure, (the stadium design) was one other one of many causes. It actually wasn’t configured for baseball.”

A fourth issue might need been Kuhn himself. He was changed as commissioner by Peter Ueberroth in 1984, ending a 15-year run in command of Main League Baseball.

On the finish of the day, Harcourt figures lacking out on an MLB staff was most likely for the very best.

Article content material

“Vancouver is just too good to position in the summertime, as a result of there are such a lot of different issues you are able to do. It will be laborious to get folks in,” he mentioned.

By the late-Nineteen Nineties, B.C. Place would have been a stadium changing into quickly misplaced within the massive leagues. Retractable roofs, steel-and-brick had been the design norms. Vancouver’s hypothetical staff would probably have pushed for a brand new stadium.

“In hindsight, I believe it’s an excellent factor we didn’t get a staff,” Harcourt mentioned.

However as a stadium, it’s stood the check of time. It’s nonetheless the house of the Lions and it’s dwelling, once more, to the Whitecaps. It’s hosted commerce present after commerce present. It’s not an ideal venue however it stays viable.

“It will be laborious to prime the situation, if they’d picked a distinct spot it’s unlikely it might have lasted 40 years,” Beck famous.

Article content material

“Is there a extra essential sports activities facility in B.C. historical past? It’s outlived Empire stadium, which lasted 28 years, from 1954 to 1982. Rogers Enviornment is getting shut 30. The Pacific Coliseum is older however hasn’t had a  main league staff in virtually 30 years.”

[email protected]

twitter.com/risingaction

In 1983 B.C. Place opened to the world.

It has hosted a few of the largest names in sports activities with Gray Cups, NFL and MLB video games, NASL and MLS soccer matches, key worldwide video games such because the FIFA Ladies’s World Cup, together with the world’s largest music acts, from the Rolling Stones and David Bowie to Jay Z and Justin Timberlake.

Article content material

They’ve additionally offered a number of concessional fare.

Right here’s a have a look at a few of the numbers for the 40 years of occasions at B.C. Place, based mostly on common occasion estimates:

• Hotdogs: 2,180,159, which interprets to 504,674 kilos. In the event you laid these hotdogs end-to-end you’ll get to Seattle … and again.

• Hamburgers: 1,313,927, a whopping 410,602 kilos. Primarily based on the dimensions of the typical cow, that’s about 2,767 cows to make these burgers.

• Popcorn: 1,782,751 buckets offered, although about 1,700,000 of these had been consumed by the media within the press field.

• Draft beer: 6,734,94 cups, that’s 2,296,327 litres. Take the Rugby 7s out of the equation and that quantity drops considerably.

• Bottled beer: 6,365,701 bottles, 2,841,217 litres. That’s $636,570 if you happen to bought all of the empties and returned them to a B.C. Recycling Centre.

Article content material

The entire of draft and bottled beer collectively would fill two Olympic-size swimming swimming pools.

Comfortable drinks: From a fountain machine, 2,381,784 cups or 1,549,632 litres. Bottles/cans, 870,229 items for 467,027 litres. Whereas that’s a number of pop, including the 2 collectively is concerning the quantity of water that flows over Niagara Falls each single second.

Spring subscription sale: Our in-depth journalism is feasible because of the assist of our subscribers. For a restricted time, you may get full on-line entry to the Vancouver Solar and The Province, together with the Nationwide Submit and 13 different Canadian information websites, for simply $40 for one 12 months or $1 every week for 52 weeks. Help our journalism by subscribing immediately: The Vancouver Solar.

Article content material