Surrey Mayor Doug McCallum never corresponded with planning staff, or anyone else for that matter, concerning the feasibility of a 60,000-seat stadium he proposed near the outset of his re-election campaign, records indicate.
Furthermore, early email correspondence the mayor received concerning his Aug. 23 proposal was overwhelmingly negative.
Glacier Media filed a request for copies of all email correspondence to and from the mayor concerning construction of a stadium, from Jan. 1, 2020 to Aug. 25, 2022.
No records were found, according to the city clerk's office, except for 10 emails to the mayor in the two days following his announcement.
Of the 10, eight criticized the mayor’s idea, one person said if a stadium is built it could host a Major League Baseball team and another solicited the mayor to finance the stadium.
“You are pricing us out of Surrey with this wild idea of a stadium,” wrote one person.
“What a joke you made on TV about building another stadium in the city,” wrote another.
“Explain how building a 60,000-seat stadium is going to make Surrey safe?” asked someone (names were redacted).
“A billion-dollar investment when we have record number of homeless; record number of overdoses; rampant inflation; record high gas prices; badly deteriorating infrastructure; unaffordable housing; tax amounts soaring due to an extremely expensive Surrey Police Service…” wrote another person.
One person appeared more diplomatic than others: “Thank you Mayor McCallum for your public service. Going into public service is a sacrifice. But your proposal to build a 60,000-[seat] stadium in Surrey makes absolutely no sense.”
Nevertheless, McCallum said on local radio station Red FM this week he was getting "tremendous response" from the community on the proposal.
McCallum has stated the stadium he has in his own mind will include 60,000 seats, have no parking lot and be multi-use, including for ice hockey (it’s unclear how such a stadium would be constructed and configured). Among the many questions it raised are, how and why would any major sports franchise relocate from BC Place or Rogers Arena in downtown Vancouver and is there enough demand for events for the region to have three major stadiums?
McCallum is running for re-election under the Safe Surrey Coalition slate and faces a criminal trial for public mischief commencing Oct. 31.
McCallum did not respond to a request to comment via his campaign website.
