MLS says B.C. Place ‘unsustainable’ for Whitecaps

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“We get 17 days where we can play our games, and that’s it.”

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Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber laid it all out, again, that the Vancouver Whitecaps’ stadium situation at B.C. Placeas currently set up, is untenable.

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They need a new arrangement, he said Wednesday at the MLS All-Star Game in Texas. Think about last fall, when the Whitecaps had to play a home playoff game not at home because B.C. Place was pre-booked for a massive motocross show.

In speaking with reporters, Garber told Vancouver-based freelance soccer reporter Har Johal that he’d received some updates from the team in recent days. Pressed by Johal, Garber was unequivocal.

“The update is we’ve got to get a new stadium situation for the Whitecaps,” he said.

“We have no plans to move the Vancouver Whitecaps,” he added. “But right now they don’t have a viable stadium situation.”

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Cue the ominous music, though Garber did seem to want to temper speculation some by also saying: “Not our first rodeo. We’ll figure that out. We’ll be able to get the stadium, I hope, and we’re working hard at it.”

Hence the conversations the team has had with the City of Vancouver about redeveloping land at the PNE where Hastings Racecourse currently sits. But such a transaction wouldn’t be straightforward: the land in question is managed by the city as part of a trust from the province and legislation around the trust grants the city power to manage the park in line with its long-standing uses. Would switching the racecourse property over to a sports stadium fit with its long-standing uses? There’s long been a movement to make the park more like a parkespecially if amenities currently extant in the park were to close.

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In other words, if the racetrack is going to close, that land should become green. The horse-racing lease is up next May. Most assume its days are done. The Tsleil-Waututh Nation have signed a deal to take over the connected casino licence, but not the horse-racing operations. They have acknowledged that they want a seat at the table should the Whitecaps talks about moving in get serious.

But it’s also not clear there can be a casino without a horse-racing operation. The folks that run the actual horses at the track insist the licences are tied together, that they can’t legally be separated.

It’s also been understood that a new stadium, purpose-built for soccer, would aid the Whitecaps in their pursuit of new ownership.

Last December the team announced that the current ownership group, led by Greg Kerfoot, was putting the team up for sale and had hired Goldman Sachs to aid in their search for new investors. But other than a few whispers a few months ago about conversations with local Indigenous groups, the news around a sale remains very quiet.

More to come …

pjohnston@postmedia.com

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