Canada’s largest soccer dome ready for kickoff
Massive facility touted as game-changer for several sports and community events
The crown of a just-inflated massive structure can be seen above the tree line like a submarine breaching the ocean as motorists head south on 101 Street toward the Edmonton Scottish Society grounds.
The Edmonton Soccer Dome, the largest facility of its kind in Canada, is set to open in a month, altering the sports landscape in the region.
“I’m just proud. Every time I drive past it, I smile,” said Edmonton Soccer Dome general manager Antony Bent. “I’m not over it yet, it’s huge. There is a lot of relief that it’s up and it’s really exciting. The timing is unbelievable, because the indoor season starts in six weeks and we’ll be ready to go in four weeks.”
The dome was inflated last Thursday and will be operational in mid- September. It encompasses 12,541 square metres (135,000 square feet), is 152.5 metres by 53.34 metres, (500 feet by 175 feet) with a height of 25.6 metres (84 feet).
The dome is designed to house three different soccer game models. It can be configured as four seven-vs-seven soccer fields, three nine-vs-nine fields, or one fullsized 11-a-side field.
The field turf is currently being laid so outdoor activities can move indoors year round.
“The Dome has been arriving in pieces over the last four weeks,” Bent said. “It’s coming from the south coast of America and it’s been shipped up, I think, on 15 different trucks. Everything arrived about a month ago and then we had to wait for the right gap in the weather, we had to have no wind and no rain.
“They put it together very quickly, it came in 10 massive pieces and they bolted all that together and stuck it to the foundation and then they started to inflate it. I thought it would take a few days, but it was up in two hours.”
The cost to erect the structure adjacent to the QEII Highway at 3105 101 St. SW was upwards of $7 million. Along with being the largest in Canada, it is also among the top five largest in North America.
The Edmonton Scottish Societyled venture received funds from the city and province.
“The financial commitment was certainly reduced when the City of Edmonton and the Province of Alberta saw the value, but we’re going to be, I think, in a positive cashflow position fairly quickly,” said Edmonton Scottish United Soccer Club technical director Kevin Poissant, who is also on the board of the Edmonton Scottish Society. “The community has embraced it in terms of bookings and this facility is one phase of a multi-phase project, where we think we’re going to be perfectly positioned to support culture and sport in the Greater Edmonton region.
“We hope this is a step towards several of these facilities being built in the Edmonton region. I can see a number of groups looking to tackle something like this and every soccer club that can get out of a gymnasium into a soccer-specific environment that allows basketball teams and volleyball teams and handball teams to get into their traditional environment more often, so I see the whole sport community benefiting.”
The Dome will be accessible to a variety of groups and will not be limited to soccer.
“It’s a sports dome and a community space,” Bent said. “A few community groups have reached out to us. It’s just such a big space, it’s so versatile, we can cover the turf and put on shows and concerts, really whatever you want.”
The project was conceived four years ago by the society and has been in the works since.
“Everyone who walks in and has a look is overawed by it,” Bent said. “There were a couple of near misses and fender benders on the side of the road because people went to work in the morning and then they came home and then this whole space station appeared from nowhere and it was good for the local traffic to see it.”