EDDIE IZZARD

NEW OPENING
BY TOM WALKER
The design was inspired by
Quebec’s cold climate
FROZEN DREAMS
The opening of the Centre Vidéotron in Quebec could return a professional
ice hockey team to the city for the first time in 20 years
Canadian cities Quebec,
Toronto and Montreal are
often considered as being the
most ice hockey-mad towns
in North America – if not the
world. In all three, hockey is more than just
a sport. The players are idolised and arenas
treated almost as places of worship.
For the past two decades, however,
Montreal and Toronto have held a distinct
advantage over Quebec – a team to support
in the National Hockey League (NHL).
While Montreal is home to the famous
Canadiens and Toronto has the Maple
Leafs, Quebec’s beloved Nordiques were
forced to relocate to Colorado in 1995 due
to the “financial environment”.
The problem was that having a successful
team on the ice wasn’t enough to sustain
the financial goals of Nordiques’ then
owner, Marcel Aubut.
The team was forced to play at the
ageing, 15,000-capacity Colisée de
Québec and Aubut wanted the city
council to part-finance a move to a bigger,
modern arena where it would be easier to
create and operate alternative revenue
sources, such as retail operations and a
CENTRE VIDÉOTRON
Architect/design team:
Populous, ABCP Architecture,
GLCRM & Associates
Project manager: Genivar
Structural engineers: Thornton
Tomasetti and M-E Engineers
Services engineer: SNC-Lavalin
Contractor: Pomerleau
Operator: AEG Facilities
The arena sits within Quebec’s ExpoCite
casino. When a deal couldn’t be struck with
city officials, Aubut sold the franchise to
COMSAT Entertainment Group based in
Denver, US and the Nordiques became the
Colorado Avalanche. It was a devastating
loss for the city of Quebec.
RETURN TO BASE
For the past 20 years, the Nordiques
faithful have been campaigning to bring an
NHL team back to the city. In September
this year – after a number of false starts
and dashed hopes – those efforts finally
took a huge step forward thanks to the
opening of the Centre Vidéotron at
Quebec’s ExpoCité district. The 18,200-
capacity arena was too late to save the
original Nordiques, but is seen as the
missing piece in putting a solid a case
for the NHL to finally award a franchise
to Quebecor – the telecommunications
company which part-owns Centre
Vidéotron (along with the City of Quebec)
and has been actively seeking to secure an
NHL team since 2011.
For Populous, the architects appointed
to design the arena, there was never
any doubt who the intended permanent
tenant would be. “This is absolutely a
hockey-first design with the intention of
securing an NHL franchise in the near
future,” says Kurt Amundsen, principal at
Populous. “The size of Vidéotron and the
facilities within the venue mean that this is
a major league arena.”
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sportsmanagement.co.uk issue 4 2015 © Cybertrek 2015