The cost of Vancouver’s Freedom Mobile Arch, featuring the world’s largest freestanding timber roof, will now blow out to CA $184 million – an increase of CA $46.2 million from the last estimate. That is according to new reports from the Daily Hive, which revealed that the City Council quietly approved the budget at a private meeting in May 2025.
It comes after the PNE last month revealed that construction crews are “on track” to finalise the building envelope by January, with the structural steel and seating to be installed in February, ahead of final fitout and occupancy targeting a May opening date – mere weeks before the FIFA Fan Festival site opens in mid June.
The project was conceived by the PNE before the pandemic, and was identified as a key component in the City’s Hastings Park/PNE master plan in 2010. And whilst some planning for the project began in 2018, with the Vancouver City Council approving the preliminary project concept and cost in 2021, the costs of the project have almost tripled from CA $64.8 million before the pandemic, to CA $82.6 million in 2023, CA $137.8 million in 2024 and finally CA $184 million today.
“The final PNE Amphitheatre construction budget was based on the completed tender pricing of the finalised drawings, and a target completion date of Spring 2026. The target completion date was established so that the Amphitheatre would be operational for the Summer 2026 entertainment season, taking into account both PNE event revenues and the FIFA Fan Festival,” according to the City, which responded to Daily Hive Urbanised.
“Cost estimates prior to the final construction budget were developed before the tender of the completed drawings. Key factors that contributed to the final budget included market-driven cost escalation for materials and labour, challenging ground and soil conditions, global cost pressures affecting construction and upgrades to essential utilities and site-wide improvements.”
In August, Wood Central revealed that the final beam had been installed over the Freedom Mobile Arch, with crews clicking the final glulam beam into the 105m-long timber roof: “The work to date on the roof structure of the Freedom Mobile Arch has been extremely complex, and we are pleased that our General Contractor, EllisDon, has met this significant milestone on time,” said Ming Tian, Vice President of Facilities and Master Plan Projects for the PNE at the time.
The roof —extensively covered by Wood Central— features 60 glulam arches arranged in six barrel-vaulted segments. Designed by Revery Architecture, working with Fast + Epp and PFS Studio, some arches stretch up to 25 metres, forming a 105-metre-long “starburst roof” and are supported at just three points, creating sweeping, unobstructed views that blend into the surrounding parkland.
Each of the 27 roof segments spans up to 20 metres and weighs 16,000 kilograms. In total, the build incorporates more than 800 tons of structural steel and 900 tons of glulam and cross-laminated timber—materials selected for their strength, acoustic performance, weather resilience, and fire safety. “The roof reimagines the traditional mid-century concrete shell with a mass timber design,” according to Venelin Kokalov, Design Principal at Revery Architecture, who spoke about the design in October 2023.
- To learn more about the massive installation on site, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from mid-August, when the final beam was installed over a three-month period. And to learn more about the curved timber used in the project to direct the sound towards the audience and not the surrounding suburbs, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.
