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Originally Posted by Thunderball
1. Stadia. McMahon Stadium is suitable for the wrecking ball, and little else, unless 30-100 million dollars is found to bring it up to code. It works for the CFL (for now) because of the niche nature of that league, and the die-hard attitude of its supporters. But in 3-5 years, when McMahon is the lousiest stadium left, that will likely change. Hellard and Foothills are too small at ~2000 each. But, rumor is FC Edmonton's stadium plan is to play at Clarke (1200 seats) and add about 2000 temp seating... so Edmonton may be setting a precedent that allows these two facilities to be in play for a Calgary NASL franchise. Except for reason
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Unless the stadium has deteriorated dramatically in the last few years I think you're severely overstating things. It's by no means a nice stadium, and lacks pretty much anything that would be considered fancy, but it serves its purpose quite effectively.
You need to remember what that purpose is, 9-10 CFL games a year and a handful of U of C games. You can't honestly tell me that an NFL style stadium is needed to serve that purpose, that would be one of the most absurd financial wastes I can imagine. In order to justify something like that you'd need to dramatically expand the use, and honestly what additional use are you expecting?
An MLS franchise would fit the bill, but that puts us in a chicken and egg scenario and I'm not convinced that Calgary is an MLS city regardless of the stadium and I sure as hell wouldn't be funding a stadium on that basis.
Concerts shouldn't be a consideration, the one or two stadium tours that may roll through each year should be seen as a bonus, not a basis.
If you look at the stadiums used by the vast majority of NCAA programs you'd find that they aren't all that different from McMahon. Some have recent press/luxury box additions, but the base structure is still the cement slab look and the concourses are shuttered holes in said cement slabs. And these are facilities catering to 2-3x more people per event.