Owners of Winnipeg CFL stadium sue architect over poor construction
by The Canadian Press
The statement of claim lists five pages of defects and deficiencies.
WINNIPEG—The owners of the stadium where Canadian Football League team the Winnipeg Blue Bombers play have filed a lawsuit that maintains the architect and builder should be made to pay for extensive repairs.
Triple B Stadium alleges that the repairs were necessary due to faulty design and construction by Raymond S.C. Wan Architect and Stuart Olson Construction.
The $200-million stadium opened in 2013 and is to be the site for this fall’s Canadian Football League Grey Cup game.
It has been plagued by problems such as leaky luxury suite roofs, insufficient insulation to keep plumbing operational in winter and poor drainage.
It also needed immediate renovations to make it usable for concerts and its press box was unheated.
Wade Miller, president of the Winnipeg Football Club, says in a statement that his organization fully supports the legal action.
Triple B Stadium includes a report from a Winnipeg architectural and engineering firm in its statement of claim filed Wednesday.
“During the design and construction of the stadium, there was insufficient attention to the mechanics of water drainage and heating, there was poor execution of critical details and poor construction quality control,” Triple B quotes from the report in a news release.
The statement of claim lists five pages of defects and deficiencies.
Triple B is a consortium that includes representatives from the Manitoba government, the City of Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba and the Winnipeg Football Club, which owns the Bombers and runs the stadium.
“While we are extremely disappointed that we have had to deal with continuous and ongoing issues since we became the primary tenant in 2013, we believe today is an important step forward in attempting to have them resolved,” Miller said.
Triple B Stadium chair Andrew Konowalchuk told CJOB Radio in Winnipeg that it’s unclear how much it will cost for all the remediation work.
“Triple B and the Winnipeg Football Club spent $4.7 million worth of remedial work that either has been completed or is underway currently,” he said. “Further testing is required to get a true value of the cost for remediation going forward.”
Konowalchuk said the building is safe, but the problems need to be fixed to prevent more issues in the future.
A statement of claim contains allegations that have not been proven in court.
