Construction of Saint Mary’s University pop-up stadium is underway

The transformation of Saint Mary’s Huskies Stadium into a temporary CFL venue has begun.

“We have a complement of seating that we already have on campus,” said SMU Athletic Director Scott Gray. “But we are also building at the end zones.”

If all stays on schedule, this 11,000-seat pop-up stadium will be assembled in short order.

“These guys want to be done in two weeks,” said Gray.

Saskatchewan and Toronto will play a sold out regular season CFL game at Saint Mary’s on July 29.

There has been speculation this temporary stadium could stay long-term as a possible home field for a future permanent CFL team and other big events.

“Right now, we haven’t made a decision,” said Gray. “We will focus on the game in July and then we’ll see where the conversation takes us after that.”

HRM Councillor Tony Mancini said expanding the SMU facility represents a new and innovative way to further explore a possible stadium strategy in the HRM.

“There is no official look at it from a HRM perspective,” said Mancini. “We are looking at it from the outside, unofficially, seeing what this will look like.”

Shoehorning a stadium into south end Halifax does present some hurdles.

“The roads are narrow to begin with,” said David Dube, who works in the area and predicts traffic will be congested and parking most likely will be in short supply. “That’s going to cause an issue for sure.”

The only question is whether these will be long-term issues or short-term issues.

According to Mancini, when the Halifax Wanderers first began play, he heard a lot of similar concerns about parking, traffic and noise in that neighborhood. In his opinion, those have not been major issues for the Wanderers. He is hopeful they also won’t be at Huskies Stadium as well.

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