Posted May 26, 2025, 11:27 PM
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Join Date: Dec 2015
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What's in and what's (likely) out as the PNE sees itself as the next 'entertainment destination'
It’s becoming clear the future of Hastings Park does not include horse racing.
Hastings Racecourse’s lease comes up next year. And when you talk to people involved in running the PNE, it’s clear that the most likely outcome for the site that’s hosted horse racing since 1892 is something else.
“What I’m excited about, is the amount of interest that is being started,” Mike Klassen, the Vancouver city councillor who also serves as deputy mayor and as co-chair of the PNE, admitted to me recently.
There was the news last month that the Vancouver Whitecaps are interested in building a stadium on the grounds managed by the PNE. The aging racetrack seems an obvious location, but how that happens is far from final.
The Whitecaps, though, aren’t the only interested party.
“The fair, I think, has a great opportunity and almost an obligation, to evolve with how we use the land in this city right now,” Klassen said.
“This is a very important asset that the citizens, the people of Vancouver, have and so we need to start thinking about how we can make best use of it. And I think the expressions of the interest that we’re getting from various parties just lead me to feel like this is the beginning of a really exciting future.”
Given there’s already the renovation and expansion of the open-air amphitheatre, the upgrading of the Agrodome and Pacific Coliseum (with their new tenants, the Professional Women’s Hockey League, set to move in), plus the possibility of a stadium in place of the racetrack, you are right to wonder if this is an emerging sports district on the city’s east side.
“I would say that there’s a vision to have the space be an entertainment destination,” PNE president and CEO Shelley Frost said. “It’s going to be a mix of amusement parks and amphitheatre and different kinds of festivals and events. And there will be sport there, too.”
It’s certainly a shift in self-image. Playland is set to be expanded. The sports presence in the park is being revived — this will be the third big-time hockey act for the Coliseum and if soccer returns, the third go-round as well — but also alongside the daylighting of Renfrew Creek to run from the sanctuary’s pond on the south edge of Hastings Park north to the restored salt marsh in New Brighton Park on the shore of Burrard Inlet.
The greening project is long awaited.
This renewed interest in hosting big events, that is a different question.
Frost says there’s the practical truth of being able to fund everything. The PNE is a non-profit, so to fund all its operations, it needs to host events. They’ve long done well hosting concerts and other events at the Coliseum, but upgrading the amphitheatre will give the PNE a whole new way to host concerts. And so will locking in the PWHL to the Coliseum: that’s another 15-20 dates per year, Frost noted.
Klassen thinks the city’s residents will like it. He remembers the success the B.C. Lions and Whitecaps had playing at Empire Stadium before they moved downtown to B.C. Place in the early 1980s. The year-plus those teams played at the temporary Empire Field a decade ago while B.C. Place was renovated reminded everyone of how great the location is.
Rapid transit is what really makes a sports venue work and there is no denying that the sprawling and picturesque northeast property would be positioned well if the notion of another rapid transit route to the North Shore ever comes to fruition.
“Yep,” Klassen said, with a knowing nod.
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https://theprovince.com/sports/pne-entertainment-destination-future
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