The stadium's recent upgrades include new video boards, a fresh playing surface, more suites, an expanded visitors’ locker room and 16,100 temporary seats.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
The backstory to BMO Field is long and complicated. But bottom line, the Toronto lakefront venue is the little stadium that grew.
How it began is a tangled web, with the stadium tied to Canada hosting the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup and Toronto getting an expansion Major League Soccer franchise.
“At the end of the day – and I emphasize the words at the end of the day – it was a winning strategy,” said Kevan Pipe, who doggedly led the stadium project to its successful conclusion in his role back then as chief operating officer of Canada Soccer.
He sees the stadium as a major step forward for soccer in Canada.
“It really was a turning point for the game,” Pipe said. “I’m very proud of it.”
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Today, BMO Field looks a lot different from the 20,000-capacity stadium built for a bargain-basement $63-million. More than $300-million has been spent on renovations in the years since, much of it coming from Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which operates the city-owned venue.
The most recent changes, completed at a cost of $146-million, bring the stadium up to FIFA standards for the World Cup. They include new video boards, a fresh playing surface, more suites, an expanded visitors’ locker room and 16,100 temporary seats, increasing capacity to 44,000.
The venue, rebranded as Toronto Stadium for the duration of the tournament because of sponsorship issues, will host Canada’s opening Group B match against Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 12.
The seeds for the stadium were planted in 2000, when Sepp Blatter, then FIFA president, asked Canada Soccer to host the inaugural FIFA U-19 Women’s World Championship (now the FIFA U-20 World Cup), planned for 2002.
The tournament was a hit. Players Christine Sinclair, Kara Lang and Erin McLeod did their part, leading Canada to the final, where the home side went down 1-0 to the U.S. after extra time before a crowd of 47,484 at Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium.
Its success led to more opportunity: a bid to host the 2007 Women’s World Cup, tied to a plan to build a national soccer stadium.
With the University of Toronto’s venerable Varsity Stadium going under the wrecking ball in 2002, a new soccer home was desperately needed in the city. That year, Canada Soccer presented its plan for a national soccer stadium to the federal government; in 2003, the governing body commissioned an independent viability study.
There would be many twists and turns before the first shovel went into the ground, however, with events on the other side of the globe and political turmoil in the country’s capital threatening to throw a spanner in the works.
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Canada’s hope of staging the 2007 Women’s World Cup was derailed by the 2002 SARS outbreak, which started in China and spread to 29 countries. The pandemic prompted FIFA to move the 2003 women’s tournament from China to the U.S., promising China the 2007 edition in return.
As a result, FIFA advised Canada to turn its attention to the 2007 Men’s U-20 World Cup instead.
Seeing the need to secure a tenant for the proposed Toronto stadium, Canada Soccer approached Richard Peddie, then chief executive officer of MLSE, in the fall of 2003 to discuss bringing a Major League Soccer club to the city. Subsequent polling funded by MLSE showed strong support for an MLS franchise; MLS commissioner Don Garber also liked the idea.
A worker trims the grass at Toronto Stadium on June 4.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
More good news came in the form of a February, 2004, ruling by the International Football Association Board (IFAB) that said artificial turf surfaces for international matches would be permitted if they met certain standards. The City of Toronto preferred an artificial playing surface, to allow the stadium to be used in winter under a bubble.
Several months later, Canada Soccer asked that FIFA directly award Canada the men’s U-20 tournament – with hosting rights conditional on construction of the Toronto stadium.
Blatter agreed, putting it in writing.
“That’s what unlocked everything,” Pipe said. “That was the key.”
A stadium budget was set at $63-million, plus $10-million for land.
So began the delicate funding dance with three levels of government. By the end of 2004, Ottawa had verbally committed to $25-million.
Multiple venues were considered, including York University and the site of the old Varsity Stadium on the University of Toronto campus. Those both died on the vine, terminated by the schools. The site of the former Exhibition Stadium, on the Canadian National Exhibition grounds, was also proposed.
In 2005, it seemed the ball was finally ready to get rolling. MLSE and MLS reached agreement on an expansion franchise for Toronto, conditional on the stadium built in time for the 2007 FIFA U-20 tournament. MLSE agreed to operate the stadium for 20 years.
Stadium technical drawings were ordered that summer – only to see the project stall over a lack of progress in securing Exhibition Place and city support. FIFA, meanwhile, was pushing for commitment to the U-20 World Cup, and MLS was also piling on the pressure.
“We had all these deadlines and all these people screaming at us,” Pipe said.
The Ontario government signed on to the project that September. And with then mayor David Miller taking the lead, Toronto City Council gave the green light by a 25-13 vote on Oct. 28.
“There were a lot of key people involved who, at the end of the day, all worked together in partnership to create this crazy linkage of all levels of government and the private sector and the non-profit sector in getting this thing done,” Pipe said. “It many ways it was unique. I’m not sure how often you would every see that happening again.”
One piece of the puzzle remained: final confirmation from Ottawa. In November, 2005, an order-in-council authorizing expenditure was signed just hours before Paul Martin’s minority government fell to a non-confidence vote.
In December, 2005, PCL was approved as the stadium project’s general contractor. Construction started Jan. 2, 2006.
The final reckoning saw the federal government, through Infrastructure Canada, contribute $27-million. Ontario committed $8-million and Toronto pitched in the land and $9.8-million, taking over ownership of the stadium. MLSE, meanwhile, covered $18-million ($8-million toward the construction and a further $10-million to secure the naming rights, recouping some of that investment with BMO later paying for the name).
“It really is mind-boggling. what we got in return for $63-million. … There weren’t a lot of bells and whistles but it served the purpose,” said Pipe, who worked at Canada Soccer for 21 years. (He is now president of Kevan Pipe Football Consulting and serves as a consultant to FieldTurf.)
With funding finally in place, it was a race to get the stadium built for Toronto FC’s home debut on April 28, 2007, against the Kansas City Wizards. A little more than two months later, Canada lost 3-0 to Chile on the new pitch during the FIFA U-20 World Cup.
The venue will host Canada’s opening Group B match against Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 12.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
Bob Hunter, who worked as vice-president, venues and entertainment for Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment from 1998 to 2019, spearheaded the original construction.
He “was the one who really rolled up his sleeves and cracked the whip and made sure the darn thing got built on time, on schedule and on budget,” Pipe said.
Hunter, who is now working on the Calgary Flames’ new stadium in Calgary through his company BCI & Associates, also oversaw BMO Field’s two-phase $150-million upgrade from 2014 to 2016.
The first phase saw seating capacity expanded to 30,000. A second deck was added to the east grandstand, along with new suites, private clubs, concession stands and a video board in the north end.
The second phase added a canopy over the east, west and south stands; accommodations for a CFL field – the Toronto Argonauts moved their home games to BMO Field for the 2016 season – a locker room for football players; and a new sound and lighting system.
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Of course, some things haven’t changed. Pipe, who will watch Canada play Bosnia-Herzegovina as a guest of FIFA, was directly responsible for several of the stadium’s most notable original design details.
After seeing first-hand how many clubs around the world use seat design for branding, he issued instructions to the project’s supplier.
“Seats must be red and there must be a white maple leaf on the far side,” he said.
And the giant maple leaf on the lower level of the east stand remains hard to miss, visible from planes landing at nearby Billy Bishop Airport.
Pipe also requested that the first row of seats be as close as possible to the pitch, no more than six metres away.
“They cheated on me. I think they made it seven or eight,” he said, with a laugh.