How much will Clarke Stadium upgrades cost?

FC Edmonton founders, officials need to present taxpayers with some hard numbers

There’s a literal turf war brewing at Clarke Stadium, Edmonton’s storied football field.

How fitting — given the stadium was named for Fighting Joe Clarke, Edmonton’s most pugnacious rogue of a mayor, a man who never backed down from a brawl.

Built 80 years ago, the stadium, also known as Clarke Park, was the original home of the Edmonton Eskimos. The CFL team still uses the facility — which was completely rebuilt and refurbished in 2001 — as its practice field. It’s also the home to the Edmonton Huskies, the local junior football team. It plays host to all kinds of high school and community football games, too.

It’s also been the home to various iterations of FC Edmonton, the city’s professional soccer team. The team, now on hiatus, used to compete as part of the North American Soccer League. Now, there are moves afoot to create a new Canadian Premier League, and Tom Fath and Dave Fath, the founders of FC Edmonton, want to compete in the CPL.

Last month, the Fath brothers arrived at city council’s community and public services committee meeting with a very big ask. They want the city to expand and renovate the stadium. Then, they want to be the stadium’s marquee tenant. The councillors on the committee voted unanimously in favour of bringing forward the proposal for funding in a future budget cycle.

So far, most of the debate has focused on the fight between the football and soccer people.

The football fans’ argument can be summed up in four words: We were here first.

They say bumping football would leave amateur teams without enough playing time and rob the Eskimos of access to their practice field.

The soccer fans argue soccer is the game of the future, a multicultural sport that reflects Canada’s evolving demographics.

But I’m not as interested in the fight between the two sporting factions as I am in the cost to the rest of us.

FC Edmonton’s owners aren’t just asking to be Clarke Stadium’s primary tenant.

They want the city to renovate the stadium in a serious way. The stadium seats just over 4,000 people. The Faths want the city to add 3,000 more seats.

They want the city to upgrade the field’s lighting and sound systems.

They want new permanent dressing rooms. They want better laundry facilities. They want new bathrooms and more concession areas.

The Faths also want to sell the naming rights. Oh, and they want to run their own concessions and keep the profits.

How much would it cost to add another 3,000 seats to the stadium? What would be the price for all those other upgrades? What’s the potential value of the naming rights?

The city report simply doesn’t say. And no one from the city administration was willing to hazard a guess.

Coun. Scott McKeen is a member of the committee that voted to push this project forward. But McKeen told me the committee wants the city administration to come back with numbers and a plan to share the facility.

“I think it’s going to cost millions. Between $10 million and $20 million would be my rough estimate, to expand the seating and to add the dressing rooms and concessions and things that Fath talked about,” said McKeen.

“But we’re not going to spend $15 million or $20 million on (Clarke Stadium) to keep Mr. Fath happy. We don’t just give professional sports a free pass.”

McKeen said he could be persuaded to support the renovations, but only if the renovated facility also serves the Eskimos, amateur football and amateur soccer.

Sure, soccer is the game of the future. But we’ve been told that in Edmonton since the days of the Drillers. The truth is, professional soccer has yet to catch fire with Edmonton fans.

In the meantime, council is considering spending unspecified millions to upgrade the soccer pitch for a league that has yet to play a game. And they’re doing all this without even considering whether it might be cheaper to build a soccer facility elsewhere, whether that means starting from scratch, or repurposing a facility like our pretty Rossdale baseball park.

Before things go any further, the public needs to get a much better handle on just how much Edmontonians are being asked to spend, and for whose benefit. Clarke Stadium is a public asset that belongs to all of us. And we all need to be consulted before we invest millions in its future — and then give that future away.