Everything about Olympic Stadium Montreal totally explained
The
Olympic Stadium is a
multi-purpose stadium in
Montreal,
Quebec,
Canada built as the main venue for the
1976 Summer Olympics. It subsequently became the home of Montreal's professional
baseball and
Canadian football teams. Since the
Montreal Expos relocated to
Washington, D.C. in (and prior, the
Montreal Alouettes leave in
1997), the stadium has had no main tenant, and with a history of financial and structural problems, is largely seen as a
white elephant. It currently serves as a 56,040-seat multipurpose facility for special events (for example concerts, trade shows) during non-winter months, and continues to serve as a venue for
Grey Cup games hosted by the
Montreal Alouettes. La tour de Montreal, the tower incorporated into the base of the stadium, is the tallest
inclined tower in the world at 175 metres, and is a member of the
World Federation of Great Towers.
History
Background
The stadium was designed by French architect
Roger Taillibert to be a very elaborate facility featuring a
retractable roof, which was to be opened and closed by a huge 175-
metre (583 ft 4 in) tower – the tallest inclined structure in the world, six metres (20 ft) taller than the
Washington Monument, and the
sixth tallest building in Montreal. The design of the stadium is remarkably similar to the Australia Pavilion at
Expo '70 in
Osaka.
The
Olympic swimming pool is located under this tower. An Olympic
velodrome (since converted to the
Montreal Biodome, an indoor nature museum) was situated at the base of the tower in a building similar in design to the swimming pool. The building was built as the
main stadium for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The stadium was host to various events including: the
opening and closing ceremonies,
athletics,
football finals, and some
equestrian events.
Construction
As construction was well underway, a labour
strike caused a major delay to the building of the tower. The roof languished in a warehouse in France until 1982. It wasn't until 1987, over a decade later, that both the tower and roof were completed, officially completing construction of the stadium as originally designed.
Opening
Problems plagued the stadium from the time it opened for the Olympic Games, when it was only half built.
Seating 58,500 at the time, the stadium wasn't fully completed in time for the Games due to strikes by construction workers, leaving it without a tower or roof for the opening and several years following. Both the tower and the roof, made of over 60,000 square feet (5,575 square metres) of
Kevlar, were not completed for over a decade, and it wasn't until
1988 that it was possible to retract the roof. The 65-ton roof then proved difficult to retract, and couldn't be used at all in winds greater than 25 mph. This resulted in the unique phenomenon of a
rain delay in a covered stadium during baseball season whenever rain was accompanied by high winds. It was also torn during particularly windy conditions.
Stadium financing
Despite initial projections in 1970 that the stadium would cost only
C$134 million to construct, strikes and construction delays served to escalate these costs. By the time the stadium opened (in an unfinished form), the total costs had risen to C$264 million.
The Quebec government introduced a special
tobacco tax in May 1976 to help recoup its investment. By 2006, the amount contributed to the Olympic Installations Board accounted for 8% of the tax revenue earned from cigarette sales. The 1976 special tobacco tax act stipulated that once the stadium was paid off, ownership of the facility would be returned back to the City of Montreal.
In December 2006 the stadium's costs were finally paid in full. The total expenditure (including repairs, renovations, construction,
interest, and
inflation) amounted to C$1.61 billion. Despite initial plans to complete payment in October 2006, an indoor smoking ban introduced in May 2006 curtailed the revenue gathered by the tobacco tax.
Perceived by many to be a
white elephant, the stadium has also been dubbed
The Big Owe,
Uh-O or
The Big Mistake. In a speech announcing that Montreal would host the Olympic Games, then-mayor of Montreal
Jean Drapeau is remembered for saying, "The Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby." This now-famous quote is often parodied by residents.
Continuing problems
Although not completed in time for the 1976 Olympics, construction on finishing the tower recommenced in the 1980s. During this period, however, a large fire set the tower ablaze, causing damage and forcing a scheduled
Expos home game to be postponed. In 1986, a large chunk of the tower fell onto the playing field during another Expos game.
In 1987 an orange-coloured
Kevlar retractable roof was installed, finally completing the stadium a decade late; however, soon after it was put into use it ripped on several occasions due to design flaw. In the months that followed, it was plagued by further rips and even leaks whenever it rained, bringing water down into the stadium.
Due to claims of being a poor venue for baseball, the stadium was remodeled in
1991, with 12,000 seats being removed for Expos games. Most of those seats were in a distant section of the center field stands.
On
September 8 of that year, support beams snapped and caused a 55-ton concrete slab to fall on to an exterior walkway. No one was injured, but the Expos had to move their final 13 home games of that season to the opponents' cities. For the
1992 season, it was decided to keep the roof closed at all times. The Kevlar roof was removed in
May 1998, making the stadium open-air for the
1998 season. Later in 1998, a $26 million opaque blue roof was installed which doesn't open.
In
January 1999, a 350 square metre portion of the roof collapsed, dumping ice and snow on workers that were setting up for the annual
Montreal Auto Show.
In 2005, since the stadium had no regular use for its artificial grass surface, the
FieldTurf surface was sold for C$1 million to the
BC Place domed stadium in
Vancouver,
British Columbia.
It was recently used in 2006 for the opening and closing ceremonies of the
1st World Outgames and is regularly used for other events such as the main event of the
Black and Blue Festival, the biggest gay
circuit party in the world.
Transit
The stadium is
directly connected to the
Pie-IX metro station on the
Green Line of the
Montreal Metro.
Facts and figures
- Well over its original budget, the stadium ended up costing $770 million to construct. By 2006, the final cost had risen to $1.47 billion when calculating in repairs, modifications and interest paid out. It took taxpayers 30 years to finally pay off the cost, leading to its nickname of "The Big Owe" (a play on "The Big O").
Olympic Stadium holds the record for a soccer game attendance in Canada. At the 1976 Summer Olympics soccer final, 72,000 people witnessed East Germany's 3-1 win over Poland.
A yellow seat on the 300 level commemorates a 534-foot home run by Willie Stargell of the Pittsburgh Pirates.
The roof is only 52 metres (173 ft 4 in) above the field of play. As a result, a number of pop-ups and long home runs hit the roof over the years, necessitating the painting of orange lines on the roof to separate foul balls from fair balls.
The Montreal games of the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup were held at Olympic Stadium on a FieldTurf surface that was installed specifically for the tournament.
At 175 m (574 ft), the Olympic Stadium is both the world's tallest slanted structure and stadium.Further Information
Get more info on 'Olympic Stadium Montreal'.
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