Demolishing Montreal Olympic Stadium would be costly, but experts question $2B price

The estimate is raising questions because other North American cities have torn down stadiums for hundreds of millions of dollars less.

Quebec’s tourism minister says demolishing Montreal’s Olympic Stadium would cost $2 billion, but that estimate is raising questions because other North American cities have torn down stadiums for hundreds of millions of dollars less.

Caroline Proulx released the estimate earlier this week as she presented a comparatively cheaper plan to spend $870 million to replace the unstable and hazardous roof of the stadium built for the 1976 Olympic Games. The venue can’t hold games or exhibitions half the year because of the roof’s fragility — events are cancelled if more than three centimetres of snow are forecast.

But throughout the years, Quebec politicians have said that the only reasonable option is to continue maintaining the stadium — even if its roof has never really worked since it was completed in 1987 — than to get rid of the concrete behemoth in the city’s east-end.

“It’s certainly more than I’ve ever heard of for a stadium teardown,” said Victor Matheson, an economics professor with College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., who specializes in sports economics.

In Atlanta, Ga., for example, a domed football stadium was replaced in 2017 with the cost of demolition and construction estimated at US$1.6 billion.

“The fact that in Atlanta you can build an entirely new stadium and tear down the old one for the same price of just tearing down the one in Montreal seems concerning,” Matheson said.

The cost of bringing down a sports venue can vary widely. In 2017, an Ontario company was awarded $2.1 million to demolish Regina’s 33,350-seat football stadium; other demolitions have been more expensive. In Washington, D.C., the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium was demolished at a cost of US$20 million in 2023, according to local media.

In New York City, the cost of demolishing the original Yankee Stadium was estimated around US$25 million, The New York Times reported, though the city would spend another US$25 million turning the site into a park.