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Turf at BC Place


tovan

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Do it right from the get go, and go with a natural playing surface.

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Half a billion dollars is not being spent on BC Place renos for the sake of 20 MLS games and 18 CFL games or whatever the real numbers are. The big money comes from all the other non-sporting events all of which would kill any attempt to grow natural grass inside the place. There will be no room outdoors to store natural grass pallets either since all available land is slated for condo/office tower development to pay for the renos.

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That's a bit of a red herring. Most stadiums are multi-use. The Rogers Center, Air Canada Center, Olympic Stadium... they all lead with the same "multi-purpose facility" tagline. They run concerts and events and similar Auto Shows, Home Shows and Craft fairs.

Which rendering is the right one - the one with the upper deck or the one without?

http://www.cbc.ca/gfx/images/news/photos/2009/01/09/bc-090109-bc-place-retractable-roof-FULL.jpg

http://bcplacestadium.com/images/roofinterior.jpg

If that suspended Jumobtron is half as cool as the renderings it will really define the place. Wonder how they plan to refract natural light to make it visible in full sunlight?

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It is not a red herring, not one of the other 'multi-use' facilities you list has a natural grass playing surface for exactlt the same reason as BC Place does not. The non-sporting events make up the bulk of BC Place usage. I can just imagine the damage the boat show and its associated heavy hauling trucks would do to a $5 million drained, irrigated and heated natural grass pitch, especially if the Whitecaps had a game scheduled two days later.

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Actually I wasn't referring to grass at all. Grass wouldn't last a season with that kind of use. But it would last a lifetime if properly managed in the 30,000 seat temporary stadium. They're even going to play on grass in Toronto where people actually own parkas.

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In Vancouver, snow and cold may not be quite the factor that it is in Toronto, but try playing on a grass field, even a properly engineered and drained one, during some of our wet weekends. Most facility operators close their drained grass fields for days after a downpour in order to preserve them hence the popularity of FieldTurf.

As an aside, well do I remember sitting on a snowbank at Lamport Stadium watching my son and his 14 year old cohorts in gloves and toques shovel snow off the carpet so they could have their Ontario All-Star training session on winter weekends. That was the year he suffered sever frostbite in all his toes and was lucky not to lose any. Kids don't know how easy they have it under the bubble nowadays ;)

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Ah the old Lamport astroturf in the 80's. Fibres were a thing of the future back then.

The bubble just went up this year and they were still alternating training indoors and outdoors last year. At least when you get to the national level some local Estonian is out there shoveling for you.

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