(Quebec) The days of the Olympic Stadium are numbered if its roof is not replaced soon, according to the Legault government. “If we wait any longer, within a year or two, it will be the complete closure of the Olympic Stadium,” said the Minister of Tourism and responsible for the file, Caroline Proulx, on Wednesday.
She neither confirmed nor denied the information from The Press according to which the replacement of the roof and the technical ring would cost at least 750 million dollars. “There is no comment on the cost of replacing the roof which will be exposed here,” she said during a press scrum in parliament, upon her arrival at the weekly meeting of the council of ministers .
“There is a business file that I requested from the Olympic Park which will be submitted and which we will be able to study somewhere in January. We’ll get back to you,” she added.
The council of ministers will then decide to give or refuse the green light for the work.
Caroline Proulx insisted: “we are really at the end of the roof’s life”. “It’s not if, it’s when there’s going to be a final tear.” We currently have 20,000 tears,” she said. A permanent closure would occur in a year or two if the roof is not replaced, she said.
Of course, renovating a roof “is not the sexiest thing”, but it is a necessary step to attract the NFL and Taylor Swift according to her.
The objective behind the work is “to operate the stadium more than 120 days a year”. In January, the Council of Ministers will take note of the business case including the cost and schedule, but also of a “strategic plan” to attract more major events. The Olympic Park is in discussions with the NFL to hold matches, she recalled.
As for Taylor Swift, “we escaped” because the stadium does not meet the standards for this type of concert. Replacing the roof and technical ring would also allow for the installation of new speakers and lighting. The current equipment dates from 1976, according to her. There would be, in addition to the “exterior covering”, an “interior covering” to improve the sound system.
“Tourist spending associated with Taylor Swift’s presence in Toronto is US$1,600 per spectator. 42,000 spectators times five days, that’s 350 million dollars that Quebec and the metropolis of Quebec are missing out on because we are currently not capable of having a stadium capable of producing “this kind of spectacle,” he said. she pleaded.
For the Minister of the Economy Pierre Fitzgibbon, responsible for the Montreal region, “something must be done with” the stadium and its demolition “is not a good solution”.
The government will ask itself a question to choose whether or not to move forward with the work: “how many events can we have that will justify the decision” to invest? he said.
According to him, “the stadium can become more important and we have to do something with that”. He made a link with housing projects in the east of the metropolis and a “recycling innovation zone”.
With Philippe Teisceira-Lessard, Charles Lecavalier and Fanny Lévesque, The Press