The new roof was approved last year after more than 20 years of requests from the provincial agency that runs the Olympic Stadium. It’s expected to be ready by 2028.
Once the domain of sports stars, eight large cranes now occupy the playing field of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium.
The biggest reaches up beyond the stands and out of the ring once covered by the facility’s roof to where a few of the steel cables that once held up that structure remain suspended.
By the end of the year, the slow process of disconnecting those cables will be completed, said Nadir Guenfoud, the Parc olympique vice-president responsible for the roof replacement, and final pieces of the roof that hung over the stadium since 1998 — its second — will come down.
So far, the $870-million project to replace the decaying roof at the stadium, whose history is marked by delays and budget overruns, is on schedule and on budget, Guenfoud told reporters Tuesday.
“We know that we can’t afford to get it wrong for a third time,” he said.
While the work, which takes place on the ground, for the roof and the tower is challenging, Guenfoud stressed that the project has been carefully planned.
“This project has been a long time coming, it’s been planned thoroughly. We’ve made choices throughout the project to make sure of the reliability of the new roof. We’ve gone towards a rigid cladding that’s supposed to be more robust, more durable,” he said.
Releasing the tension on the steel cables that held up the old roof and suspended it from the stadium’s tower has been delicate work, with fears that a wrong move could result in cables crashing into the stadium’s tower, Guenfoud said. A device was installed to measure the tension on individual cables as it was slowly released. Guenfoud described the process as one of dismantling, rather than demolition.
About 22 kilometres of steel cable has been removed so far, amounting to 1,332 tonnes of metal, he said, with the work being done by more than 300 workers, of whom around 100 are on-site on any given day.
The next phase of the project — expected to take all of 2025 — will involve dismantling the concrete “technical ring” around the stadium’s opening, which holds ventilation systems including heat and air conditioning as well as lighting.
It will be replaced by a steel structure six times lighter and that meets the current building code.
During phase three — running from 2026 through 2027 — the stadium’s new roof will be built on the playing field and then raised and installed ahead of a 2028 reopening, Guenfoud said.
So far, about 20 per cent of the project’s budget has been spent, Guenfoud said.
Another $91.6 million has been budgeted by the provincial government to replace the stadium’s sound, lighting and ventilation systems.
Still, Guenfoud is optimistic the new stadium will attract acts like Taylor Swift, whose ongoing stadium tour skipped Montreal.
“The objective is to be able to host very big events like Taylor Swift, like other major events,” he said. “That’s the reason to have a big stadium in Montreal, to be able to host that type of event, and that’s what we’re aiming for.”