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CPL Goes ‘Hand On’ With Quebec Expansion Plans
By If you want to get things done, sometimes you’ve got to do the dirty work – and for the Canadian Premier League, that means directly securing its own stadium solution in Quebec.
Canada’s top flight has long sought to establish a team in La Belle Province right from its very first year, with original CPL commissioner David Clanachan touting that the expansion log jam was due to break years ago, a flag his successor Mark Noonan has also been waving for Quebec.
Noonan and the league’s executive Vice President of infrastructure, Marni Dicker, both met with Quebec City mayor Bruno Marchand on Monday to discuss potential stadium sites.
“We’re meeting with the mayor and his team to explore opportunities for expansion in Quebec City,” Dicker confirmed to La Presse. “We wanted to see with the city where there would be an opportunity to build a new stadium.”
Dicker says that the city shared four or five potential stadium sites with the duo, though she could not reveal which sites were being pitched to the league.
The largest issue with Quebec City expansion has undoubtedly been the lack of a permanent stadium solution. It was two years ago that Noonan discussed the possibility of using Laval University’s stadium on a temporary basis while permanent grounds were established, and Dicker has confirmed that is still the case.
La Presse could not confirm whether the city was interested in using the old Colisee de Quebec space that the Nordiques once called home, which would offer a prime location near the heart of the city.
Whatever the location, the league is taking on the project of securing it instead of leaving that task to potential ownership groups, and Dicker says that she’s optimistic to have a firm stadium plan locked down within a two year timeline.
There have been multiple investors interested in launching a Quebecois CPL club over the years, but all have flinched when it came to securing a viable and financially-sound stadium to call home. With the CPL now stepping in to work directly with the city in this regard, the pressure to get things formally pushed over the line will mount – after all, if the league itself can’t do it, that becomes quite a tough sell for investors there.
If it does work, however, Noonan and Dicker will have solved a large province-sized gap that has been missing from Canada’s top flight since day one.
“We want the best possible location for a stadium, for the best potential for success,” says Marni. “We want something special for Quebec City.”
The league has already been burnt by expansion investors being unable to secure stadium grounds, with the Saskatoon project being permanently mothballed after its public stadium venture failed to take flight. Windsor, though awarded expansion three years ago, has also laid fairly dormant.
Noonan’s tenure in the Canadian Premier League saw him shutter financially-struggling side FC Edmonton, simultaneously adding Vancouver FC ahead of what he hopes will be a period of aggressive expansion. He later earmarked 2025 as an arrival date for two new clubs with two more on deck to follow after, before pushing that bullish target back a year later.
Last season saw the league test out the Kelowna market with an ‘on tour’ league match, though we’d said back in 2022 some internal league documents had listed the city as locked in for expansion. Whether Kelowna eventually joins the fold still remains to be seen.
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Right now, the league is heavily focused on getting something firm cooking in Quebec. Once a stadium ground is found and secured by the league itself, only then will the CPL pass the proverbial baton over to the right ownership group.
“We’ll make the decision as a league on where we want a stadium,” confirms Dicker. “once that’s done, we’ll determine the appropriate partner.”
Source: La Presse
