I have looked at literally hundreds of small to medium-sized, and even large stadiums on the internet over the past year. Most permanent stadiums are built either entirely or mostly out of concrete. It has many benefits as compared to steel; concrete is low cost, has natural fire retardant properties, can be formed into almost any shape, has low maintenance, and has been used for stadium construction since the Roman Empire days. There are experienced precast manufacturers and cast-in-place contractors in the Maritime provinces and also throughout North America (so there will be many sources for precast items such as the seating risers). Concrete construction is extremely sturdy with good rigidity and high mass, which will mean that the resonance frequency will probably not be reached when thousands of fans start stumping in unison (this has been a problem with some steel frame stadiums that can start to bounce around once the fans hit a certain frequency of stumping).
A good way to minimize the complexity and cost is to design a basic section of the stadium that can be repeated several times to build the complete stadium. For example, design the stadium to have a 50 foot wide repeating unit with the minimum number of different custom components - I like to think in terms of the Montreal AutoStade versus the Montreal Olympic Stadium. Some of the stadium units could be slightly modified to suit certain specific requirements such as media box facilities. Another big advantage of such a segmented design is that it gives more flexibility to stay within budget. Once the detailed design has been finalized, if it is found that the cost will be significantly over the budgeted amount then the number of 50 foot wide stadium sections can be reduced. If initially it was thought that 16 sections could be built for $40 million, but then if the detailed cost estimate indicates that it will cost over $50 million, then the number of stadium sections could be reduced to perhaps 12 sections instead of 16.
I drew a 3D design in SketchUp of a 50 foot section. It has good sight lines, is compact and has relatively low complexity. The bottom tier is split, being partly below grade level and partly raised - people would enter the stadium near the middle of this lower level of seats. There would also be stairs throughout this ground floor level leading to the second floor level which would have individual stairs to each upper tier section. I have inserted an image of a 50 foot section below.
I imagine a stadium that would be almost entirely concrete (some metal will be embedded within the cement as rebar reinforcement). The stadium rakers, and seating risers would almost certainly have to be precast, whereas the stadium support columns, beams and flooring could be either precast or poured in place. There are some examples of concrete cantilever roofs - RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, Florence Franchi Stadium, Montreal Olympic Stadium and a few others. However, such a roof might be costly so maybe something like the metal supported roof of the Gamla Ullevi Stadium in Sweden would look good (that stadium was built at a modest price - I inserted some images at the end of this post).
I pasted 16 segments (1340 seats per segment) of the stadium unit to produce the stadium layout shown near the end of this post. This would seat about 21,440. If 2 segments were removed then it would seat about 18,760 (14 segments). I have not drawn in the roof covering.
(Say there is a repeating unit such as this (I posted a 3D view and side view). The rock represents the ground under the stadium)
This 50 foot wide unit could be repeated several times to form many possible stadium configurations such as the one below:
If eventually the field were completely surrounded by stadium segments and the gaps filled in then it would look a bit like the Stanford Stadium below. Except it would be lower along the sidelines and seat about 40,000 instead of 50,000 for Stanford. It would be a very compact stadium.
(source:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2005/julaug/farm/sports/stadium.html )
Here are a couple of pictures showing the roof of the Gamla Ullevi Stadium in Sweden which was built at a modest price. Source: http://www.gais.se/Fotboll/gais.nsf/Permanent/$First?Open)
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If a team were to marketed as an "Atlantic" team, would there not be potential to have some combination of games being played in Moncton, and some in Halifax? I am sure from a Stadium operation point of view, you would want as many games as possible played in your venue, but I am thinking as well that if this is done, you might also develop a larger fan base and therefore more people from both nb & ns who would be willing to travel to both venues for games. This would make for more regular and larger attendance numbers over fewer games in each location, which still could be an attractive option.
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