Staff prepare temporary grass at BC Place stadium. The stadium, which is undergoing hundred of millions of dollars of renovations, is scheduled to host seven matches during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Vancouver organizers for the FIFA World Cup gathered media on Monday to show off a new field in southeast Vancouver that will be one of the two practice pitches for the games.
At a cost of $24-million, which included the price of digging up and replacing boggy peat under the existing surface, the field will eventually be carpeted in a special grass now being grown in the Fraser Valley.
Vancouverites may be expecting the kind of city-changing legacy projects that transformed the region for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But the grass field at Killarney and the new outdoor amphitheatre at Hastings Park are not the kind of lasting benefits that make hosting events of this calibre worthwhile, critics say.
“It’s next to nothing,” said Vancouver park-board commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky after the latest round of announcements about FIFA preparations in the city.
“There’s nothing tangible here.”
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The Olympics brought a new highway to Whistler, a rapid-transit line to the airport, two community centres in Vancouver and one in Richmond, a special park for cross-country skiing and another one for bobsledding at Whistler, and new housing complexes in both Vancouver and Whistler.
Tiina Mack, director of park planning and development at the city’s park board, acknowledged the new grass for the Killarney field will only last a few years and will need to be replaced with artificial turf at some point.
“There’s no money for a potentially new field at the end,” said Mr. Bastyovanszky.
David Legg, a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary who studied the legacy of the 1988 Olympic Games in Calgary, said it’s not surprising FIFA will bring much less to the city than the 2010 Olympic Games did.
The 2010 games were entirely hosted by three connected cities for almost a month, so all the activity was centralized in one place. With the World Cup games, Vancouver is one of 16 host cities in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico.
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“Because there is such a variety, people will forget which cities hosted which games,” said Prof. Legg.
Instead, Vancouver planners are touting benefits other than physical assets: improving the city’s brand as well as developing strong alliances among local businesses, organizations and governments that will provide a long-term boost to economic productivity.
Jessie Adcock, the lead for Vancouver’s FIFA hosting obligations, said the city will benefit in many intangible ways. “This creates a tourist legacy,” she said.
She said Destination B.C. predicts there will be $1-billion in tourism benefits in the five years after the games because people who come for major supporting events are known to return to those cities later.
The legacy will be “putting our brand on a global stage.”
Vancouver ABC Councillor Sarah Kirby-Yung acknowledged that “the Olympics are a different animal from FIFA,” so there won’t be the same level of transformative projects.
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She also said that having the city show that it can successfully host something like the World Cup games will demonstrate its ability to host other large events and continue to strengthen Vancouver’s appeal as a tourist destination.
But Mr. Bastyovanszky said he doesn’t know how well that will work out when the city just passed an austerity budget. Among the 400 people who will lose their jobs are transportation planners – a group that was key in the 2010 Olympics to ensuring that people and necessary vehicles could move around the city efficiently.
“There’s going to be this collision between an austerity budget and when everyone arrives,” said Mr. Bastyovanszky.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in an April news release the organization would contribute US$1-million to each of the 11 American cities hosting games, but there was no mention of Canada or Mexico.
The release said the money would be used to build mini-FIFA pitches and support projects that would foster soccer.
Chris May, general manager of the government-owned BC Place where the games will happen, said the renovations on the stadium are proceeding rapidly and the new facilities, which will include new premium boxes and lounges, will bring “significant new streams of revenue for BC Place into the future.”
Representatives from the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations also talked enthusiastically about the long-lasting benefits the World Cup will bring to their people, with at least one new soccer field being planned, along with watch parties that the Squamish plan to host on their land.
“It’s going to be an incredible opportunity,” said Tewanee Joseph, CEO for the Squamish Nation Major Sport Entertainment and Marquee Events Secretariat.
What's Canada's path to the World Cup?
On Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 1 p.m. ET, sports reporter Paul Attfield and columnist Cathal Kelly will answer reader questions on Canada’s path in the 2026 World Cup and how it could fare in the group matchups and beyond. Submit your questions in the form below, or by e-mailing audience@globeandmail.com with “World Cup” in the subject line.