Halifax is one step closer to a getting a stadium. A quick, though possibly rude, decision by HRM’s top bureaucrat, CAO Richard Butts, may mean we’re only months away from seeing a mock-up. Butts awarded the contract for picking a possible site and beginning to design a Halifax stadium to local firm Fowler, Bauld & Mitchell (the firm behind the new Halifax Central Library). Their deadline to hand in a report: December.

Though many details of this possible sports complex are still up in the air, Haligonians have bandied around the idea of a stadium for decades. Because this iteration is tied to the 2015 Women’s World Cup, and we’re still smarting from our Commonwealth Games bid fiasco, we’ve learned the importance of asking the right questions.

Where did the call for a stadium come from?
In July of 1983, Halifax’s hopes of being home to a Canadian Football League (CFL) team, the Atlantic Schooners, died when the team couldn’t meet the league’s deadline for funding a stadium. In recent years, the stadium craving was revived partly by Moncton-envy (Harper gave them money in 2006 for one of their own), and partly by the efforts of the anonymous development cheerleaders at the Skyscraper forum, whose October 2009 thread about stadium dreams has ballooned to 179 pages and is still growing.
The reason this current push for the goalposts has made it this far is probably because HRM city council smelled potential federal WWC 2015 infrastructure funding for the project. The schizz is so real, this time, it even has a Twitter account. I know, right?

Why do we have to use taxpayer money to build it?
CBC says the only way to afford the price tag is if all three levels of government chip in. The first danger sign was Premier Darrell Dexter saying Halifax shouldn’t count on the province to pitch in. The second one came during the 2011 spring federal election campaign, when Stephen Harper said: “We will not spend taxpayers' money on a professional sports arena or stadium in Quebec ... and we will not participate in such projects in ... Halifax."
Tough deals.
But the city is also hoping for some business dollars will be injected by selling sponsorship rights to the scoreboard and the name of the facility, at least.
Finding a permanent tenant, like a Canadian Soccer Association or CFL team, would also be a boost, financially—and not having one might be a deal-breaker. The report says most stadiums this size survive because they have an anchor tenant. CFL-anchored stadiums are bigger; soccer ones are smaller.

How big is it supposed to be?
It would need to be able to accommodate 20,000 seats minimum, according to FIFA rules for Women’s World Cup venues. Some of those could be temporary seating, but that’s not ideal. In physical terms, 30,000 to 40,000 square metres is what we’re talking.
[Not that it matters, but a 20,000 *or 25,000 seat-venue is also the minimum to attract an Atlantic-region CFL franchise, though Moncton may have beat us to that punch.]

Where would a stadium go?
Federal Minister of Defense and perpetual meddler in all things Nova Scotian, Peter MacKay, likes Shannon Park for it, and the Skyscraper forum-ites seem to prefer Dartmouth Crossing (the same user who made the digital image at the top of the post created the YouTube video at the bottom of this page).
The Fowler, Bauld & Mitchell study will make the final call on the location, and will have to consider regional accessibility, alternative uses, parking, and the possibilities for expansion and private development at any possible site.
We made a map of all the possible spots that have been thrown around as suggestions:

View Possible Stadium locations in a larger map

Have other cities been burned by similar projects?
Well, yeah. But that doesn’t mean, with proper planning, sensible council representatives and adequate oversight of government spending, we would. Right?
Moncton went $3.8 million over budget on their stadium (oops). Meanwhile, in the bustling metropolis of Los Angeles, California analysts are questioning the economic returns of a downtown stadium, while developers are pushing for legislation to make them harder to sue.

How much money are we talking here?
The first study compared stadiums with price tags ranging from $72 million for Toronto’s BMO Field (including the cost of land) down to $3.6 million for the 6,540 seater, general-purpose King George V Park in St. John’s, Newfoundland. For the size Halifax wants, I’ve seen the numbers $30 to $60 million brought up most often.
The report presented to council expects the stadium to run a deficit of $295,000 - $495,000 per year.

How much public input has there been on this?
The first report incorporated some public consultations (a href=http://contrarian.ca/2010/09/29/halifax-public-consultation-template/ target=_blank>probably of this variety). Some old online petitions have been kicking around, collecting signatures for a while, in favour of a stadium.
And a Metro Halifax–commissioned poll in May found 60 per cent of respondents agreed that Halifax needs an outdoor sports stadium. But the public of course have a lot more to say than ‘yes or no’ on the subject.
Public consultation is said to be an important part of the Phase 2 study, so a new round of meetings will be announced soon (likely here).

Will the stadium be private or public? And who will get to use it?
The stadium will be built with big events in mind, but with “community functionality.” Examples of possible uses would be hosting university teams’ games and tournaments, big ticket concerts, and trade shows.

OTHER LINKS:

City’s landing page for stadium public documents: http://halifax.ca/stadium/
Phase 1 report, passed by council: http://www.halifax.ca/council/agendasc/documents/110809cow3ii.pdf

This video was also created by Kevin Langille, a Skyscraper forum user:

**Updates**

Fixed the credits for the digital models

This is from the Skyscraper forum:

"Although I did the conceptual 3D stadium model, which I animated and uploaded to YouTube, the other 3D model that I pasted at the Dartmouth Crossings location was a 3D model of Stanford Stadium that I downloaded from the Google 3D Warehouse which was drawn by username NICK who is unknown to me. It is permissible for me to download the Stanford Stadium by NICK but I can't take credit for it.

One other minor note, we are not all anonymous; my real name is Kevin Langille and a few others on this forum have identified themselves."

*Also added a broader estimate to reflect this comment on Skyscraper:

"It's great to see a pragmatic article about the stadium. One item you may want to check on is the minimum requirement. Most information suggests that 25,000 seats is the minimum for a CFL franchise not 20,000. http://cfldb.ca/2011/08/depth-moncton-market-unclear/