B.C.Place Stadium
B.C. Place Stadium opened in 1983 as the world's largest air-supported Dome. With 60,000 seats it hosts the B.C. Lions CFL football team (from July to November), as well as major star concerts, trade shows and other large gatherings. It was in this enormous building Queen Elizabeth II invited the world to Expo 86. Some of the province's largest trade and consumer shows, like the Pacific International Auto Show, B.C. Home and Garden Show, Spring and Fall Gift Shows, the Vancouver International R.V. Show, the Boat Show, and more take place under the dome each year. Parking in the stadium lots ranges from $7.00 to $10.00 during events. In other nearby parking lots, the rates vary from as little as $3.00 to $6.00. The air-supported roof over B.C. Place Stadium was first inflated in 1982. During inflation, the lighter exterior panels rose higher than the central area, which has about twice the dead weight due to the two-way cable grid. The design consists of a fabric outer membrane and an inner liner made of the same material, attached to a two-way steel cable net system, which is in turn anchored to a concrete base ring. The patented technique for designing the length and direction of the cables and the shape of the ring derives from a mathmatical solution formulated by David Geiger. It has been compared to a tennis racket in the way it distributes stresses along the ring beam. There's enough concrete in B.C. Place to build a sidewalk from Vancouver to Tacoma, Washington. |