PNE president lobbies NDP to help pay for FIFA Fan Festival venue
Outdoor concert amphitheatre budget ballooned from $65 million to $135 million.
Construction of the 10,000-seat Freedom Mobile Arch at the PNE has surpassed the halfway mark with less than a year until its scheduled opening.
PNE President Shelley Frost said on June 20 that the $135 million-budgeted concert venue is on track for completion in May 2026, in time to be the centrepiece of Vancouver’s FIFA Fan Festival at the PNE.
The original price tag was supposed to be $65 million.
“Like you are hearing everywhere, this is a challenging construction cost time, but we are still looking to be on track, and on track with time,” Frost told theBreaker.news. “We do still have some pieces that need to be tendered and so we'll know the final cost once those final pieces are tendered.”
Frost’s name appeared in the B.C. Registry of Lobbyists in April, targeting the Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport — the ministry leading provincial preparations for FIFA World Cup 26 — in search of general program and project funding.
“We're just putting a more formalized structure in place where we can have some conversations about how to bring all three levels of government to the table to help support an incredible venue,” Frost said.
Frost said she is seeking both capital funding and support for major events and festivals, at a time when U.S. tariffs are affecting construction material prices.
“Those are the kinds of things that are always on our mind. But anything that we can do to reduce the load on the PNE, in terms of the amount that needs to be paid back [to city hall], is just helpful for us, to be able to start investing into other parts of the site,” Frost said.
The vast, wooden roof of the Freedom Mobile Arch will be longer than the 2008-opened Richmond Olympic Oval. The latter used lumber from pine beetle-killed B.C. interior forests. Meanwhile, for the Arch, Frost said “a lot of it is coming from Quebec, but it is all-Canadian wood.”