Development

Secrecy enshrouds Whitecaps Stadium  

In the worst roll-out of any cockamamie scheme this city has ever seen, The Whitecaps and their media sponsors fuel fears of waterfront destruction and chaos in the streets

By Kevin Potvin  

One of the fundamental problems with the Whitecaps Stadium proposal right from the start has been the blanket of secrecy enshrouding it. The first public inkling of the idea appeared in a highly advanced and very splashy Vancouver Sun front-page artist’s rendering, complete with a suite of highly-developed stories. How long had they sat on news of the proposal? The Sun, curiously, was immediately listed at the Whitecaps website as a “sponsor of the proposal,” whatever that means. I asked, but Whitecaps officials feigned no knowledge of the arrangement.

Then it was revealed that Greg Kerfoot, the billionaire owner of the Whitecaps and the man behind the stadium pitch, purchased rights to four times as much property as the stadium required, in a piece of land stretching all the way down the last undeveloped waterfront in the city to Main Street. But Kerfoot has not been reachable by this or any other media since the release of his proposal.

Then The Province newspaper, also listed as a sponsor of the Whitecaps, hastily removed the results of an online poll it conducted gauging public support for the stadium, after the president of the Whitecaps talked to a sports editor at the newspaper about the negative results the poll revealed (over 70% of votes were opposed). The editor of The Province told The Republic the poll had been tampered with, but revealed no evidence of the tampering or of any investigation.

Then at city council hearings into the proposal, it emerged that Senator and former one-term mayor Larry Campbell may have set the whole crazy scheme in motion in an unofficial off-the-record discussion with Kerfoot asking him to consider building a stadium at the site, an invitation that caused Kerfoot to spend $19 million acquiring the land.

Even Ian MacIntyre, sports writer at The Sun, acknowledged in a column last week that conspiracy theories are swirling around Kerfoot and his plans, the secrecy becoming enough itself to threaten to sink the project. It might be because it is a poor plan to start with, but the Whitecaps Stadium proposal has got to be the worst ever roll-out anyone has ever tried in this city since the Sniffy the Rat art escapade. The Whitecaps have even been caught offering prizes for those willing to sign its petitions of support.

It gets better. After the meeting on June 27, it emerged that the proposal for the stadium, already a threat to the surrounding community with traffic, noise, and safety issues, involves far more, including an extensive street-level retail plaza along the sides of the proposed building, offering over 100,000 square feet of new retail and restaurant space that will presumably compete with—and potentially wipe out—Gastown merchants. None of this was part of the proposal as it had been presented to the public or to City Council so far.

At public hearings, those opposed (echoing this newspaper) wondered aloud about Kerfoot’s plans with the adjacent property that amounts to four times that required for the stadium. As if to fight fire with fire, a supporter wondered aloud whether the president of the Gastown Business Improvement Association, which opposes the proposal, had clients already secretly lined up to build condo towers where the stadium is proposed.

Larry Beasely, retiring city planner, pointed out that such a massive proposal as a downtown stadium to be located in the last remaining waterfront space in Vancouver should really be only considered as part of a comprehensive plan for the whole area, and then in questioning, added that such a plan would take a minimum of ten years to work out. To this, the Canadian Soccer Association, supporters of the proposal, asked for an expedited treatment of the proposal from the City to allow the stadium to go ahead with no other planning whatsoever, since the mere concept of the stadium had already become part of a serious bid by the Association to Fifa, the world soccer governing body, to host the 2011 Women’s World Cup. Approval should be granted in less than 12 months, not 10 years, the Association charged, or the man proposing to build it, Greg Kerfoot, may well change his mind and walk away.

Through two long special public consultation meetings so far, with opponents outnumbering supporters at the rate of two-to-one, the opponents have been extremely generous in their expressions of love for soccer in general and of the Whitecaps FC in particular, and are generally excited about the idea of a new soccer-dedicated stadium somewhere in the downtown sector—just not at that particularly sensitive site. Despite that, Councilor Suzanne Anton, clearly a supporter of the cockamamie scheme (it does involve a sports field after all), warned public speakers about hostility to the Whitecaps FC, even though there had been none expressed thus far. Perhaps her notes from Whitecaps officials prepared her for some hostility, and the meeting was getting late without her having a chance to issue the warning on their behalf, and into the record.

While opposition to the proposal has mostly dealt with specific problems to do with clearly defined elements of the proposal, support has mostly taken a more nebulous shape built loosely around grandiose ideas of kids playing the sport of world peace and Canada ascending in World Cup rankings. There is no significant disagreement between the two sides over love of the game, support for the Whitecaps FC, and the idea of a downtown stadium. Why this site, which brings the Whitecaps so many problems, remains the only site Kerfoot will consider, is something only he can answer.

Well, The Republic can answer it too. It’s because this site allows the stadium to fulfill the role of public amenity sufficient to allow the construction of a row of condos out along the remainder of the purchased land. Any other site would be one allowing for the creation of a stadium alone, and no billionaire in his right mind would ever propose such a silly project as that.