Planning and Reconversion of Olympic Heritages: The Montreal Olympic Stadium

Abstract

For hosting cities, the summer Olympic Games (OG) has become an extremely expensive and complex urban project, partly used for urban regeneration. We can also observe that the Olympic stadium's problematic of reconversion is recurring as this infrastructure, the most significant of the Olympic park, needs colossal financing for its construction and its management. However, despite a few planning measures, we notice that after the OG a considerably low percentage of these stadiums are actually utilized. Through an in-depth study and historiography of the planning and reconversion phases of the 1976 Montreal Olympics' heritage, this article aims to demonstrate how such a facility, central to the hosting of the OG, has become a model of post-Olympic failure. Within a few years, although it was initially planned in a modest way and as a means to regenerate the entire neighbourhood, this facility had become a ‘white elephant’, costing triple what was originally planned, while we still wonder to this day what we should or could do with this mega-infrastructure.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the members of the GREF (Research Group on Entertaining Spaces) for their significant help with this research as well as the Olympic International Committee and the International Centre for Sport Studies, for its support within the context of archive consultations. The authors also thank Montreal's Archives Centre as well as the Régie des installations olympiques (RIO) for authorizing us to go through its archives.

Notes

[1] Pitts and Liao, Sustainable Olympic Design and Urban Development; Gold and Gold, Olympic Cities, City Agendas; Horne and Manzenreiter, Sports Mega-events.

[2] It is necessary to make the distinction between the summer and the winter Olympic Games since they do not generate the same impacts on the hosting territories. The number of participating athletes and disciplines as well as the necessary infrastructure is different. The summer games generally host about 300 events for more than 10,000 athletes, while the winter games hold 80 events for a little more than 4,000 participants. From an urban point of view, we also note a difference as the summer OG are organized, since 1972 in particular, within multi-billionaire metropolises while the winter games' physical conditions as well as its infrastructure specificities need to take place within medium-size cities (500,000 to 2 million inhabitants).

[3] Maguire et al., ‘Olympic Legacies’.

[4] Gold and Gold, Olympic Cities, City Agendas.

[5] Preuss, The Economics of Staging the Olympics; Essex and Chalkley, ‘Urban Development Through Hosting International Events’.

[6] Andranovich et al., ‘Olympic Cities: Lessons Learned’.

[7] Gold and Gold, ‘Olympic Cities: Regeneration, City Rebranding and Changing Urban Agendas’.

[8] Horne and Manzenreiter, Sports Mega-events.

[9] Zukin, The Cultures of Cities.

[10] Coaffee, ‘Urban Regeneration and Renewal’, 150.

[11] Hiller, ‘Post-event Outcomes and the Post-modern Turn’.

[12] Gold and Gold, ‘Olympic Cities: Regeneration, City Rebranding and Changing Urban Agendas’.

[13] Essex and Chalkley, ‘Urban Development Through Hosting International Events’.

[14] Searle, ‘Uncertain Legacy’; Essex and Chalkley, ‘Urban Development Through Hosting International Events’.

[15] Paramio et al., ‘From Modern to Postmodern’.

[16] Thornley, ‘Urban Regeneration and Sports Stadia’.

[17] Ibid., 815.

[18] Garcia, ‘Sydney 2000’.

[19] Pitts and Liao, Sustainable Olympic Design and Urban Development.

[20] Hiller, ‘Post-event Outcomes and the Post-modern Turn’.

[21] Wilson, ‘What is an Olympic City?’

[22] Gratton and Jones, Research Methods for Sport Studies.

[23] Unless otherwise noted, all translations are our own. ‘A Montréal, les Jeux Olympiques sont assurés de conserver une grandeur humaine empreinte de noblesse et marquée de simplicité’: Drapeau, Lettre de candidature pour les Jeux de la XXIe Olympiade, 1969: 1.

[24] Howell, The Montreal Olympics.

[25] Other applicant cities for the 1976 OG.

[26] Latouche, ‘Montreal 1976’; Morin, La cathédrale inachevée, 1997.

[27] The ‘October crises’ refers to series of separatists' social and political events, which took place in October 1970 in Quebec.

[28]‘[L]’ accession au pouvoir d'un nouveau gouvernement au Québec, les préparatifs électoraux municipaux et la situation politique tendue qui conduisit à la crise d'octobre donnent à penser que le dossier olympique ne fut pas considéré comme prioritaire avant le début de 1971’: Morin, La cathédrale inachevée, 81.

[29] Latouche, ‘Montreal 1976’.

[30] Marsan, Montréal en évolution.

[31] Gignac, Le maire qui rêvait sa ville.

[32] Howell, The Montreal Olympics.

[33] Kidd, ‘The Culture Wars of the Montreal Olympics’, 154

[34] Morin, La cathédrale inachevée, 110.

[35] Auf der Maur, The Billion Dollar Game, 114.

[36] Howell, The Montreal Olympics.

[37]‘M. Rousseau a atteint son objectif: si, en juillet 1976, le stade n'est pas terminé ou s'il a coûté beaucoup plus cher que prévu qu'en janvier 1975, les parlementaires n'auront qu'eux-mêmes à blâmer, puisque ce sont eux qui ont convenu, comme le maire Jean Drapeau, que la meilleure solution d'urgence se trouvait encore dans le projet Taillibert’: G. Pinard, ‘Rousseau voulait que Québec choisisse lui-même le type de stade désiré’, La Presse, 11 Feb. 1975, Montreal edition, Actuality section, 1.

[38] Kidd, ‘The Culture Wars of the Montreal Olympics’.

[39] Auf der Maur, The Billion Dollar Game, 125.

[40] Morin, La cathédrale inachevée, 1997.

[41] Multiple cracks and other concrete drops on the stadium's structure were accumulated during the 1980s and 1990s. Since 1987 and the decision to install a fixed dome on the stadium, multiple tears happened, the most important being in 1999 when the playing surface closed from November to March every year. This remains until today.

[42] Lefebvre and Latouche, L'impact socio-culturel d'un nouveau stade de baseball.

[43] Lefebvre and Roult, ‘L'après-JO’.

[44] Gold and Gold, Olympic Cities, City Agendas; Essex and Chalkley, ‘Urban Development Through Hosting International Events’.

[45]‘Le pourcentage prélevéà même la taxe sur le tabac pour payer la dette olympique fut érodé, petit à petit, par le gouvernement à partir de 1979’: Morin, La cathédrale inachevée, 166.

[46] Lefebvre and Roult, ‘L'après-JO’.

[47] Latouche, ‘Montreal 1976’, 210.

[48]‘Au lieu de perdre 25 millions de dollars en tenant 20 événements, on pourra peut-être réduire cela à 5 millions en tenant 40 événements': S. Rodrigue, ‘Rénovations majeures et nouveau toit’, La Presse, 6 May 2008, Montreal edition, Actuality section, 12.

[49]S. Lefebvre and R. Roult, ‘Un nouveau toit pour le stade olympique; vecteur de développement ou fausse lueur d'espoir’, Le Devoir, 9 June 2008, Montreal edition, Actuality section.

[50] Roult and Lefebvre, Réflexion sur le positionnement stratégique.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ibid.