Why residents are outraged over FIFA’s Memorial South Park shutdown

You may have heard, Vancouver is set to be a host city for the FIFA Men’s World Cup taking place across North America in the summer of 2026. An on-and-off relationship between FIFA and the provincial government led to Vancouver dropping out of the united bid in 2018, only to rejoin the bid and be selected in 2022.

As part of Vancouver’s bid to host the tournament, the city, through the park board, is required to “provide venue specific training sites” near BC Place and team accommodations. A seemingly minor facet of a global billion-dollar event, the proposed placement of FIFA training venues in neighbourhood parks in South Vancouver will have a significant impact on some local residents and park users for the next two years, particularly at one of those sites. 

Looking deeper into the situation at Memorial South Park, a lack of transparency around the selection of these sites, highly limited public engagement, belated sharing of information about the project, and a dubious legacy of improvements, has left neighbours and civic officials demanding answers and accountability. 

Neighbours’ concerns about a FIFA venue in their local park

In July 2024, the city announced that Memorial South Park and Killarney Park had been chosen as training sites. 

The park spaces being used to host the training sites at both locations will be closed to the public for a minimum of 20 months, “from January 2025 until late 2026,” according to a park board memo in October. 

The city’s claim in 2018 that being a host for the FIFA 2026 World Cup would have a “small impact” on the daily lives of residents, “given that there are only a few games and some training sites in operation,” is belied by the proposed plans for the training site at Memorial South Park. 

Cindy Heinrichs has lived near Memorial South Park for 40 years. 

Heinrichs is one of the people who started Friends of Memorial South Park, a community group organizing around their dissatisfaction with the project plans and communication. The group has caught the attention of the park board in particular, with commissioners asking staff to provide answers to some of the questions and concerns raised in the group’s petition. Currently, the petition has more than 1,700 signatures. 

Heinrichs first heard about the training site from another person at the park. “I actually thought she was joking. I mean, it's bizarre that they would block off this part of the park for this length of time,” she recalled. 

Trying to get answers about the project plans and have her concerns addressed has become like a part-time job, Heinrichs told Vancity Lookout. “We realized we don't know anything about what's happening, and it was really hard to find anything out,” she said.

Beth Ringdahl has lived across the street from the park for 15 years. 

“To me, it’s a sacred space. You have to be there and see the joy to understand. But I feel like our sacred space is being defiled. And that's a word that I think describes it. To bring a corporate event into a 100-year-old heritage heart of a community. It’s not a field, it is a park,” Ringdahl said.

Ringdahl is also very concerned about bringing a high-profile event into the neighbourhood, particularly the presence of police and security teams operating around her house during the event itself.  

“I’m scared, I don’t want to have a FIFA field across the street,” Ringdahl said, emphasizing her concern for the young children in the area. 

Sherry Loof and Peter Broomhall, seniors who live nearby, use the oval track nearly every day for a brisk walk. Broomhall is legally blind, and walks with a cane or a walker, which makes it very dangerous for him to walk on city streets, Loof shared. But when the married couple go to the Memorial South oval, the smooth, soft footing of the track means Broomhall can “put his sticks under his arms and walk as if he’s 35 years old,” Loof described. 

“To have that taken away for two years is really a little disturbing,” Loof said, adding there are a lot of other elderly people who frequent the well-used track. 

The park board is offering the paved sidewalk around the nearby turf field as an alternative walking loop for people who use the oval. Loof and Heinrichs both noted the comparatively narrow width of the sidewalk, and the challenge of accommodating all the different track users there.

A major concern for Heinrichs, Digby, and other park users is the removal of up to 15 trees surrounding the track. The park board is committing that each tree will be replaced with a new one. The removals include eight healthy trees, while park board staff emphasize that the “site design was developed to avoid major impacts to mature trees.” However, concern over the removal of trees persists, as the specific trees slated for removal haven’t been specified and there are several significant mature trees close to the oval track. 

Ringdahl’s goal in bringing her concerns forward is to have the decision reversed. Park board Commissioner Tom Digby recently tried to put on a motion on the park board meeting schedule that called for a postponement of the tree removals and a report back on efforts to put the training sites at soccer facilities in UBC or Burnaby. Digby didn’t receive the unanimous support he needed at the time but hopes to bring the motion as a matter of urgent business – for which only a majority is required – when the board meets next on December 9. 

Additionally, the park board is scheduled to award a construction contract for the project at that meeting. This will also be a time when commissioners can ask questions about the project on the record, looking for clarity and answers to pressing questions around public engagement and legacy infrastructure, Commissioner Scott Jensen told Vancity Lookout.

An early November memo from park board staff to commissioners regarding local concerns stated that “an alternative practice venue is not possible.” Mayor Ken Sim, quoted in Urbanized, said the city would make that same decision, to put the training site in Memorial South, again “in a second,” adding the residents’ concerns are legitimate but, ultimately, the good outweighs the bad in his view. 

Heinrichs felt that some of the responses she’s received from city and park board staff were “incredibly callous and dismissive.” 

“I’m so hurt,” Heinrichs shared with tears in her eyes. “I'm so hurt that our city cares so little about this community, they really don't care. That hurts,” she said. 

The first public information session on the estimated 20-month closure of Memorial South Park and its use as a training facility for the 2026 World Cup will be held this Saturday, November 30th from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the John Oliver gymnasium, according to the FIFA Vancouver website. 

The information session — scheduled one month prior to the anticipated closure of the project site for construction — is “geared toward sharing current information about the project,” a spokesperson for Vancouver’s FIFA 2026 host committee (VFHC) said, rather than potentially making any changes to plans or processes based on public feedback.  

A lack of meaningful public engagement

An advisory group was formed during the host city bidding process, however that engagement was geared toward transit, tourism, and soccer stakeholders from the city and province, and did not include any members of the public. 

There were no meaningful public consultations in choosing the locations for these training sites done by the city, park board, or VFHC, based on all publicly available information, interviews with park board commissioners, the experiences of nearby residents, and private communications by city staff. 

“There was no planning for the community,” from Heinrichs’ point of view. 

“When I was hearing about this [from] FIFA, the understanding was that the community would be engaged in a very thorough manner. And certainly the feedback that we've received so far is that the community has not been engaged in a manner that is really worthwhile,” Com’r. Jensen said.

The training site locations were chosen through a confidential selection process, made public in July 2024, with construction and closures planned to begin in January 2025. For residents and park users around Memorial South Park who may not be online, the only indication that anything was happening at the park was a development application about field lighting being installed in the park. 

“[The development signs] didn't really say anything about closing the park, just that four lights were going to be going up,” Loof told Vancity Lookout, adding the lack of information and straight answers around the project has been one of the main grievances for local residents.

“It's so misleading, because they put up those information signs, [which] are about light standards. They're not going to put any development application signs up about what they're actually doing. And they claim they don't have to, because it's landscaping. But they have to do major work,” Heinrichs said. 

The application, approved by the director of planning in November 2024, was open to public comments specifically regarding the lightning proposal but not the 20-month closure and use of the park as a training facility.

In emails shared with Vancity Lookout, city staff responsible for the development application seemed to express frustration with the process. 

“I am supposed to just be fielding questions about the lights for the field, but due to the apparent lack of public engagement for the Training Site selection process, I inevitably have been faced with answers about the park selection itself,” project facilitator Bryce Casidy wrote in reply to a series of questions from Heinrichs in September and October. 

Casidy went on to tell Heinrichs he didn’t think there was a “right person to talk to,” about general project concerns, and admitted there was no public consultation around the July 2024 announcement, “for reasons that are still unclear to me.”

“With the responses I’ve received so far, it has been clear that better messaging is required,” Casidy wrote. 

In his role on the park board, Jensen emphasized he’s trying to amplify and address the concerns of residents, add transparency to the process, and help the community feel like they were listened to and engaged. 

“I think one of the things that really resonates out with the community is communication being made after the fact, and so that's concerning,” Jensen said.

However, the aspiration for transparency and engagement is easier said than done when much of the communication, negotiation, and contracts between FIFA, the city, and park board has been kept confidential under the auspices of protecting the soccer organizer’s financial and commercial interests. 

Jensen wouldn’t speak to any topic which wasn’t part of a public meeting that included FIFA, including what knowledge he had of the types or level of public engagement the park board and city were involved in with community members and park users around these training sites, other than to say it was his understanding the community was being engaged by someone. 

While operational secrecy is common practice for FIFA and other major sporting events, other host cities like Toronto and Seattle have been far more forthcoming in their sharing the budgets, responsibilities, and agreements they’ve signed on for. 

One of the reasons the province initially dropped their support for Vancouver’s host city bid in 2018 was due to the agreement containing clauses, “which [the] government felt left taxpayers at unacceptable risk of additional costs,” according to a minister’s statement at the time. Given the escalation in expected costs, and similar language in other city’s agreements, it’s unclear how these concerns have been addressed.

Tournament costs and training site alternatives

FIFA, governments, and the tourism and hospitality industry all tout the economic impacts of hosting the famous tournament, with estimates by the province that the tournament could draw an additional one million out-of-province visitors and $1 billion in visitor spending between 2026 and 2031. 

Earlier this year the province indicated it would cost between $483 million and $581 million to host seven World Cup games in Vancouver in the summer of 2026. The federal government will be contributing $116 million, with the remainder being split between the province and the city, according to CBC. That’s up from an initial $230 million estimate, total, in early 2023 when Vancouver was expected to host five games. 

The city will be on the hook for about $246 million of the updated amount. However, an estimated $230 million of the cost will be covered by a major events tax, in the form of a 2.5% sales tax on hotel bookings within Vancouver. The temporary tax was introduced in February 2023 and will remain in place through 2030, according to Daily Hive.

Toronto, meanwhile, will host six games but are budgeting to spend over $100 million less than Vancouver.

Of the tournament’s 16 host cities, Vancouver and Toronto are the only hosts putting tournament training sites in public parks. All the host cities in the United States and Mexico have their training sites located at colleges, universities, pro soccer venues, or sports complexes. 

Toronto’s training site location is a far-cry from the neighbourhood parks of South Van. Etobicoke’s expansive Centennial Park already features significant sports facilities like an arena, community centre, and a stadium. 

Vancouver’s training sites “look like a totally amateur facility compared to the other alternatives, and the other cities [in the tournament],” Com’r. Digby said. 

Toronto released a detailed breakdown of their FIFA budget. They anticipated training venue capital costs to be in the range of $35.2 million, plus about $4.3 million in operating costs. However, FIFA has recently reduced Toronto’s training site requirements from two fields to one, meaning those costs will be lower. 

Vancouver has not released a comparable World Cup budget breakdown.  

Digby said he was “not impressed” with the rental fee for the park space, which he indicated is in line with park board’s standard fees for event permitting in their parks.

The Vancouver training sites were chosen after a “comprehensive analysis” of city parks, including factors like “lack of sightlines onto the pitch, the capacity to accommodate the necessary fields and facilities, equity initiative zones, neighbourhood and programming impacts, and nearby transit options,” according to a spokesperson for VFHC. 

Existing regional facilities like Burnaby’s Swangard Stadium, Burnaby Lake sports hub, and UBC’s National Soccer Development Centre were considered as training sites, but were ultimately not chosen because of existing field quality, distance from BC Place, security considerations, “potential displacement of other events,” and the need for dual training sites which offered “comparable facilities” and a “similar experience,” the VFHC spokesperson said.  

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