LOOKING AHEAD
Roughriders’ CEO has great expectations for new stadium
Craig Reynolds says he was “absolutely blown away” when he wandered through Saskatchewan’s most talkedabout construction site last week.
Reynolds, the Saskatchewan Roughriders new president and CEO, toured the new Mosaic Stadium — which is 27 per cent complete — and says enough work’s been done to put his imagination into play. He pictured with his mind how things would look; he envisioned fans, players and amenities.
“We feel quite strongly that this is going to be, for its size, the nicest outdoor, open-air stadium in North America,” Reynolds told a Saskatoon audience at Thursday’s North Saskatoon Business Association luncheon. “For its size, this is going to be an incredible facility.”
The Roughriders will play their first game at the stadium in the summer of 2017, but Reynolds said it will be “substantially complete” by the end of August in 2016. That will provide time to host test events, putting the facility through its paces before the primary tenants move in for good.
The Roughriders looked at other stadium projects that provided little time for adjustment and settled quickly on a preference.
“They allowed themselves no time to get settled; no time to test the facility,” he said. “We were pretty firm we didn’t want that to happen here.”
The new 67,000-squarefoot stadium, which has a footprint roughly double that of the current facility, will also include fan-friendly features like wider seats and five extra inches of leg room.
That space will also allow the Roughriders to merge all their operations into one facility. Reynolds, a University of Saskatchewan alumnus who takes over for the departed Jim Hopson, said team personnel is already talking about using the new Mosaic as bait to both attract and keep players and coaches.
“Average careers in the CFL are very, very short,” Reynolds said. “They look to facilities as a differentiator and (ours) will be the finest in the CFL, bar none. It will be a real competitive advantage for us in recruiting and retaining the best coaches and the best players going forward. I was talking to (assistant general manager) Jeremy O’Day the other day and we’re just starting now to see (renderings) of what the locker-room’s going to look like and what the training facility’s going to look like and what the coaches office is going to look like. We’ll have a 100-person auditorium in there, we’ve got hydrotherapy rooms. Jeremy and I were talking about how we need to get those (renderings) in front of the players, because Jeremy’s belief is it will make a difference right now when we’re negotiating with folks, when we’re trying to extend folks. Players are going to take a look at what facilities we’re going to have in 2017 and they’re going to say ‘I want to be here.’
“It will be a huge differentiator for us.”