Wanderers ‘Very Close’ To New Stadium Update

It’s been just about a year since the Halifax Wanderers released a stadium update regarding a permanent home ground earmarked to come as soon as 2024, and Global News has just secured another enticing update.

Club President Derek Martin told the outlet that the Wanderers are ‘getting very close’ to going from concept to concrete on the new stadium, going as far as to say he believes he’ll be able to talk about big details more publicly within the next few months.

The Wanderers regularly fill up all available seats in their temporary home at Wanderers Grounds, which received unanimous support from Halifax city counsellors ahead of the club’s launch in 2019.

It’s the staple sell-out environment of the Canadian Premier League, with Martin having discussed potential expansion just months into the club’s existence. Evidently, he’s still keen on the idea.

“I think as we’ve been preaching since we started this, we’ve taken the risk to prove that the concept worked. I think we’ve proven it works. So now it’s just making those next steps to give the citizens of Halifax really the proper venue that they deserve,” he told Global News.

With the current stadium seeing just over 6,000 fans rock in to the Grounds on the regular, Martin had once told CTV’s Paul Hollingsworth that a permanent venue could realistically have space for 10,000 people.

An early estimate of the cost behind such a venture was earmarked to be a twenty-million dollar affair, and with the venue on public lands he believes a private soccer team has no place in an ownership stake – much like the Halifax Mooseheads, who are not required to be the owners of downtown Halifax’s Scotiabank Centre that boasts a similar sporting capacity of 10,595.

Not everyone is keen on this, however, with local architect David Garrett opposing a project that will see overall size of public common land shrink.

To that, Martin had pointed to the history of the land itself: “all we’re trying to do is maintain what this location has been historically,” says Martin. “If you look back at pictures from the 1800s, this was a stadium.”

He hopes that the club will soon be in a position where he can openly discuss what they’re proposing for a new permanent home: the current temporary setup does not include permanent washroom facilities, running water, or built-in food concession stands, and those are all things which are expected in the proposed facility.

While fans will need to wait a little longer to find out what the Halifax Wanderers’ vision for a permanent home looks like, it looks like the day of that revelation is getting closer.

Source: Global News