The contest has generated some neat ideas for repurposing the ripped-up roof, but are we really in the mood to have the Big Owe’s exorbitant cost memorialized?
Montrealers can now vote on what to do with the defective roof of the Olympic Stadium once it is removed and replaced at a cost of more than $870 million.
Another entry, Les Toits, suggests building a series of shade-providing canopies in parks and squares. (As if the city needs any more tents sprouting these days.)
Yet another, Module-V, calls for the construction of a modular jungle gym of sorts, which could offer elevated walking trails and bike paths. (Again, this concept assumes the damaged roof is strong enough to withstand all this human traffic.)
There’s no denying some of the ideas are pretty cool — and Montrealers who vote for their favourite plan can enter a draw for a spa gift certificate! (Exclamation point quoted directly from the Olympic Park communiqué.) But it’s still hard not to feel like this is just putting lipstick on a pig, given the long, sordid, expensive saga of the Big O and its roof.
The Quebec government and Olympic Park officials justified investing this enormous amount by saying it’s cheaper than tearing down the Big O, at a cost of $2 billion, due to logistical and engineering challenges that would include the potential of the concrete exploding. Besides, that option would leave Montreal with little more than a $4-billion hole in the ground, if you added up all the money that was spent over the decades from construction to destruction.
It’s always fascinating to see what emerges when the brightest minds in architecture, art and design are asked to brainstorm. And there’s no question the submissions for what to do with the Olympic Stadium roof leftovers are of high calibre.
The issue is whether hosting a contest predicated on a boondoggle matches the public mood at the moment.
Montrealers — indeed, all Quebecers — have already thrown good money after bad at the Big Owe (the double-entendre second nickname bestowed upon the concrete behemoth).
The initial cost to build it in time for the 1976 Olympics ballooned from $120 million to $900 million by the time it opened, to $1.47 billion by the time it was paid off three decades later.
The roof has already been replaced once. The retractable Kevlar cap designed by French architect Roger Taillibert was only installed a decade after the Olympic flame was extinguished, and it was no match for Montreal’s cold winters. The original was swapped for a $37-million fixed fibreglass membrane in 1998. (The disused Kevlar was sold to an industrial research and development firm for $1.)
The current cover is so inadequate, it forces the Big O to shut down for safety reasons if more than a few centimetres of snow accumulate overhead in this wintry metropolis.
Is this legacy of ineptitude something Montrealers want to be reminded of every time they visit, say, Estade, an entry that proposes transforming the old roof into a series of flexible temporary structures the Olympic Park can use to host special events, or Re_Source, community infrastructure that would be set up to facilitate gatherings in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve?
These would be little more than monuments to faulty design and profligate waste. Literally.
Montrealers sure as hell don’t want to invest another cent, let alone millions more, to make these proposals a reality. Even the officials in charge of the competition have not dared to promise such a thing.
“Even if the Olympic Park is committed to studying the feasibility of certain of these projects, it cannot commit to their realization,” reads the disclaimer on the contest’s website.
This whole effort seems like a thinly disguised PR exercise to distract Montrealers from the gargantuan cost of replacing the roof (again) by dazzling them with more shiny new things. This bait and switch misjudges the public mood in the midst of a housing crisis and during a long period of inflation when many Montrealers are struggling to make ends meet.
No amount of rebranding will ever allow the Big O to escape the albatross of its embarrassing origins. So why bother?