Seeing the new Mosaic Stadium in use for its first-ever football game on Saturday was “exciting” for the Bell family, whose company, Souris Valley Industries, provided much of the precast concrete pieces for the new stadium.
A soft opening was held for the new $278 million stadium on Saturday afternoon, as Mosaic played host to a university game between the University of Saskatchewan Huskies and the University of Regina Rams.
“It was certainly a different experience. It was exciting seeing people using it, and there was a great feeling of accomplishment,” said Dustin Bell.
He attended the game along with brothers Mike and Luk and father Don, and as it was rush seating, their seats were in the end zone in a corner, but they were still excellent seats. He noted they had a number of private tours prior to this by the main contractor, PCL, to see how well their precast concrete pieces were fitting in to the overall structure of the stadium.
Souris Valley Industries provided about 1,500 pieces of precast concrete for the walls and bleachers, plus another couple hundred pieces for the water and sewer manholes around the outside of the stadium. The precast pieces for inside the stadium was a special and unique project for the Weyburn company, as they had to bring in equipment specially made for the production of the precast concrete pieces, some weighing hundreds of tonnes.
“It looked really nice. Everything was pieced together, and it just blended really well together,” he said, noting the contractors poured concrete to connect together the precast pieces for the walls and bleachers.
Only the lower part of the stadium was opened, with the 16,500 seats below the main concourse sold out for the game. Even with only part of the stadium, the fans were loud and boisterous for the game, and excited to see the new stadium’s amenities.
“It was just non-stop traffic on the main concourse, as it seemed a lot of people were just there to walk around it and look around. It was pretty cool,” said Dustin.
Asked how the four of them felt after putting so much work into manufacturing the precast pieces and seeing them as an integral part of the stadium, he said, “It was just a lot of pride. As we looked around, we could see some certain areas of the build that were challenging to us. All the pieces were put together nicely.”
Of the game itself, he noted it was exciting as there were two Saskatchewan teams involved, and a large contingent came down from Saskatoon to support the Huskies. The Rams won the game 37-29 over the Huskies.
“I thought it might’ve been slanted more towards the Rams, but whenever there was a play by either team, the whole place boomed,” he said, adding that the stadium will really be rocking once it is completely filled when it opens for the Riders for the 2017 season.
They met the odd person from Weyburn in the crowd and they gave the Bells a thumbs-up for how everything turned out, plus they met contractors from PCL they had worked with throughout the project.
Noting some people have had high praise for the quality of the new Mosaic, Dustin said, “Without doubt it’s one of the nicest stadiums out there. The quality I think is up there. Everything they used for materials was really top-notch. We were basically in the corner of the endzone as it was rush seating, and it was perfect. The traffic flowed freely without any problems.”
