Take In the Game at BC Place

This summer, more than a quarter of a million fans will pour into Vancouver’s BC Place for seven World Cup matches, opening with Australia vs. Turkey on June 13. And, thanks to a $196-million refresh, B.C.’s largest sports venue is ready to welcome a crowd. New additions include speedier, bigger elevators, gender-neutral washrooms, sensory rooms and nursing spaces. Regulars may clock touch-ups like a fresh coat of paint, new doors and streamlined ticket-scanning systems. At long last, the wi-fi’s nimble enough to handle the stadium’s full capacity. And then there’s the big stuff, like a brand-new scoreboard and pitch.

The Vancouver Whitecaps played their last pre-Cup game at BC Place on April 25; the morning after, grass installation was in full swing. “The timing on that is like a NASA launch,” says the stadium’s general manager, Chris May. A layer of grass, grown atop a carpet-like material in the Fraser Valley, was cut, loaded onto reefer trucks, then driven straight to the stadium, where it was laid down to grow for three weeks. The fall is stacked with concerts, including five Bruno Mars shows, so when BC Place bids farewell to the World Cup in July, it’ll also part ways with all that grass.

Two new hospitality spaces will welcome groups during the tournament, then keep BC Place bustling with conferences and conventions year-round. A handful of unused offices, plus an old BC Sports Hall of Fame storage area, were transformed into the Corner Club, which can host 600 for a view of the bowl and the glittering lights over False Creek. The stadium has also fashioned a new store from an old box office off Terry Fox Plaza. There, fans can secure merch from the stadium’s two resident sports teams (the Whitecaps and the CFL’s BC Lions), as well as a rotating cast of items from other events. The stadium has also slowly upped its concessions game over the last few years: May’s favourite snack is a massive, six-patty Stadium Beast Burger from a stand called Beast Unleashed. When ordered to a suite, it’s accompanied by a chef who’ll carve the burger up tableside. There’s also Korean fried chicken, prime rib, a custom mac-and-cheese stand, and even an order of nachos so big it comes in a pizza box.

Fitting everything together was like playing Tetris, May says; the idea was for construction work to be in and out like a series of surgical strikes. Between tradespeople and city officials, it’s taken as many as 2,000 people to shape the stadium up in time for Vancouver to welcome the world. May sees the World Cup as an opportunity to offer British Columbians a better public good—and that work, he says, is never done: “There’s no finish line here.”