The Pepsi Colisee demolition process continues, as seats from the former home of the NHL’s Quebec Nordiques will hit the block.
Perhaps best known as Le Colisee, the venue served as Quebec City’s main arena for decades after opening in 1949 and was home to the Nordiques, the city’s last NHL franchise. It was rendered obsolete by the opening of the adjacent Videotron Centre in 2015, and has not hosted an event in four years.
As part of the Pepsi Colisee demolition process, seats removed from the arena and will be put on sale later this month. Demand for the seats that are available is reportedly high, though not all seats will be sold, as there are plans to donate about 11,000 to various institutions. More from The Canadian Press:
The old arena’s white wooden seats will be sold on the Oct. 19-20 weekend at $30 per seat, in pairs, up to a maximum of 12 seats per buyer.
The organization that manages the site for the city, ExpoCite, says 500 people have already expressed interest in buying seats….
The arena’s capacity was just over 15,000 people, but only the 4,000 white wooden seats are for sale — and they aren’t self-supporting, requiring some carpentry work to install elsewhere.
The other 11,000 seats are blue plastic and will be given to municipalities, schools and other institutions.
Quebec City has been without an NHL franchise since the Nordiques relocated to Denver following the 1994-95 season, becoming the Colorado Avalanche. Videotron Centre was built with the hope of luring another NHL franchise to the city, but that ambition has gone unfulfilled thus far, as the NHL deferred Quebec City’s bid as part of its 2016 expansion process that saw the addition of Vegas as its 31st franchise. The NHL’s 32nd franchise was later awarded to Seattle, and will begin play in 2021.
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