Toronto BMO Field Renovations (FIFA26) | MLSE | Gensler

[PL1]

Not only will it have one of the best surfaces, but like I've said earlier in this thread, this is still a soccer specific stadium with the stands right up against the pitch making for a better fan atmosphere.

In the NFL even the lowest "best seats" are raised a couple feet to accommodate for the large benches on either sideline.

Rest assured how janky this temporary expansion may look (I still hope we can close corners and raise the south stand canopy one day), this stadium is going to sound amazing during the big games and it will be a dream surface for the players. It's not aesthetically pleasing but it is functionally a world cup worthy venue for the amount the city and province were willing to invest.

The surface looked really good on Saturday, with no divots that I could see. It's usually less good after the Argos' season starts. But I'm sure that will be after the WC this year

 

[SubHuman]

... It's usually less good after the Argos' season starts. But I'm sure that will be after the WC this year

Yes, it appears they don't play at BMO Field until Aug.6 .
Three of their nominal "home" games will be road games, and the pre-season one will be in Guelph.

In the NFL even the lowest "best seats" are raised a couple feet to accommodate for the large benches on either sideline.

The first Argo game I went to at Exhibition Stadium when I was about 13 or 14 years old was with a friend who had bought what he said were great seats, that turned out to be in Row 1 or 2 of that main north grandstand. The view from there was of the backs of the players standing on the sideline.
Since then I've alway bought any sports event tickets myself, and always wanted to be at least 15 rows up.
I think even today, TicketMaster seems to automatically and incorrectly (imo) assume the "best available" seat is always the lowest row, regardless of the type of event, though in recent years people can choose from whatever seats are available.

 

[simplmind02]

Sorry but i dont buy any of the turf being the best discussion. Actually all the turfs should be the "same" or as close as possible and all stadiums will receive new turfs 4-6 weeks before the tournament. Even if Toronto had "good enough" grass, they would still replace it and they will with a hybrid.

 

[Red October]

I still find all of this rather embarrassing. We invited the world to our house and set up milk crates for couches.

Biking by and seeing that "Toronto Stadium" is a series of temporary bleachers, unfinished ceilings under the canopies and seats and exposed piping and ironwork in the permanent areas, makes me grimace every time. I hope international broadcasters are distracted by the lake and skyline views and the party atmosphere from Princes' Gates to the stadium pulling their eye (and cameras) away from the stadium itself.

World Cups and other international events like the Olympics or World Fairs are an opportunity for the world's top engineers and architects to perform their best work and showcase a city, each stadium a character onto itself representing the city its in. It's also a once in a generation opportunity to leave a legacy for sports and urban infrastructure in that city. We threw together some scaffolding and much of what was built for this will be taken apart weeks later.

I can't think of a single urban infrastructure legacy project that was accelerated to accommodate the World Cup, with the foresight of knowing we were selected 8 years in advance of the Cup. No transit improvements, no new nearby parks, no new or renovated public square, and certainly no flagship stadium.

In fact, a bird's eye views from the stadium will be seeing this at nearby Ontario Place:

... and this at the stadium's transit stop, with attendees walking over and through a construction zone:

I've been to a few of these world events in different countries and let me you, they all rushed to finish nearby construction projects to show off an appearance of finished and well put together grounds. We didn't even try.

It's easy to point to vague missed opportunities so I'll list specific doable projects that could've been accomplished with planning:

• Work on the Ontario Line should've been started in advance at Exhibition Station to have begun building the station 8 years ago to have a finished World Cup transit terminal for GO trains, buses and streetcars linking Toronto Stadium to Liberty Village. An entire subway line is asking for too much (even though some cities like Vancouver expedited their transit line to open in time for their world event) but the station itself could've been built in time.
• Legacy public space: The Bentway west of Strachan and east of Bathurst had plenty of time to have been built with 8 years of anticipated scheduling and a strict deadline, creating a Fan Festival from Toronto Stadium to Downtown Toronto, leaving a permanent linear park as a legacy after the Cup.
• Exhibition Place: demolition of the Better Living Centre to expand Bandshell Park could've been done in time for this with years of advance notice.
• The Food Building is only now being planned to be renovated. Not like we didn't know 8 years ago that we'd be hosting the world in 2026.
• Liberty Village Park is only now starting the process of launching a competition to design a park.
• Toronto Stadium: it has the right bones for a respectable venue and granted the temporary seating was inevitable given our smaller permanent requirements but seeing that little was done to improve the appearance of the stadium and bring the collection of disparate additions into some harmony is disheartening. A new permanent south canopy, lifting the existing one to the height of the others. At the very least finishing the underside of the canopies and seating and the exterior of the stairwells, expanding the yellow brick and red cladding to finish unfinished areas around the perimeter. A competent architect could've harmonized the stadium into feeling like one.

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Your points about the infrastructure projects in the surrounding area are valid (I was going to say it's a very Toronto outcome but Montreal famously didn't have their Olympic Stadium finished for the Olympics they were hosting), but at least it'll be better for visitors than making the trek out to a suburban parking lot in Kansas City, Missouri and East Rutherford, New Jersey.

As far as the stadium itself goes - the tide for these types of events has very much shifted in favour of reusing and adapting existing venues or building temporary ones instead of spending billions for brand new state-of-the-art stadiums that will be used a handful of times and then basically abandoned (cough, Manaus). A lot of the London Olympic venues had the same look and feel. It's not a Toronto thing.