Prairieland Park’s construction of a new soccer stadium at Marquis Downs in Saskatoon was put on indefinite hold this week, but one advocate for the former horse race track says there was no victory here.
“The general reaction is karma, I guess,” said Nicole Hein, a jockey and advocate for Marquis Downs.
Hein said Prairieland Park took a chance on its own success rather than the benefit of the community and said now nobody is left with anything.
“They brought that on themselves.”
Hein had worked at the former race track starting when she was 13 cleaning out stalls, working there over 10 years. She moved up to become a pony horse rider, then an exercise rider until she became a jockey rider.
“Nowhere is like Marquis Downs. It’s like there’s just such a community there, there’s so much support there. It’s very unique,” Hein said.
“There’s just this sense of community and everybody loves to go to the races. It’s always packed, contrary to comments in the past.”
She was one of the many people up in arms when the closure of Marquis Downs was announced.
“They took down everything, they took down all the lights, they took down all the rails, removed everything, anticipating that it was going to pan out and it did not.”
She said everything was already there at Marquis Downs, and she felt like not enough people in the community wanted a soccer stadium at that location.
“There’s so much work that needs to be done to create a new (race track).”
She said the opposition to the stadium was never a fight between soccer and horse racing and that the project being put on hold wasn’t a win.
“It’s not. Everybody lost.”
The plan for the soccer stadium has evolved over the years, with the original pitch looking very different from what unfolded.
A plan presented to Saskatoon’s governance and priorities committee on Sep. 20, 2017 included a stadium “at a cost of only $20 million” and would have brought a Canadian Premier League (CPL) team to the city, with the first season starting in April 2019.
The plan at the time had the city yards listed as the preferred location, with Prairieland’s grandstand listed as a temporary home for the team until the stadium could be built.
This was being advertised as a multi-purpose sports and entertainment arena, saying concerts could accommodate up to 13,000 people.
Things didn’t play out as planned, though, as Prairieland Park announced the closure of Marquis Downs in March 2021 in favour of bringing in the CPL team.
Hein was vocal about the closure back then as well, saying she believed the changes to Marquis Downs went against the lease agreement the city had with Prairieland Park, addressing the matter at a May 2021 committee meeting.
“The grandstand cannot be repurposed for soccer, nor can the barns be demolished in part or in whole without it being in violation of the lease,” Hein said back in 2021.
She said allowing Prairieland to repurpose buildings means “the city is not protecting the interest of the people that these structures are intended to protect.”
Prairieland Park had a 50-year lease with the city at a rate of $100 per year through the end of April 2045.
By December 2022, the project budget for the new soccer stadium sat at $30 million.
Prairieland Park was looking for a concept plan amendment at the time as well as some funding.
The announcement of the soccer stadium plans being put on hold came on Tuesday, with the board of directors at Prairieland Park and Living Sky Sports saying other financial priorities need to be addressed.
Prairieland CEO Dan Kemppainen had said if the situation improved, the directors would jump back into the project, but there wasn’t any date set.
— with files from Ryan Kessler, Brady Ratzlaff and Brooke Kruger
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