Relief for BC Lions after Surrey arena plans pivot to former Safeway site
Published 1:30 pm Sunday, July 5, 2026
BC Lions are happy that Surrey is now looking to the corner of 104 Avenue and King George Boulevard to build a new 10,000-seat arena and cultural event centre, not two blocks north in Whalley.
Months ago the CFL team had been put on notice that the city’s preferred arena site was on City Parkway where their football training facility is located on city-owned land, along with neighbouring Tom Binnie Park.
But that’s no longer the case, following the city’s arena announcement June 30.
Lions president Duane Vienneau says the City of Surrey was never locked into the Tom Binnie site for a proposed new arena.
“I knew there were a couple of potential sites,” Vienneau told the Now-Leader on June 30. “They had told me, had indicated to me awhile ago, that it wasn’t necessarily Tom Binnie, but it could be.”
The city’s focus on the former Safeway store site on 104 Avenue means the Lions can stay longer-term at the clubhouse they’ve occupied since the 1980s and recently renovated with a new locker room, kitchen, lounge, hot tubs, cold baths, therapy/massage area and more.
“We like being in Surrey, and our owner (Amar Doman) wouldn’t have have invested that much money (in the renovation) if he didn’t,” Vienneau said. “We like it there. We’ve been there for a long time. We’ve renovated our facility. This might give us opportunities to do more.”
For the Lions, a focus is now on Tom Binnie Park’s artificial turf, which they haven’t been able to use in rainy fall months when their grass field is sometimes too wet to practice on. Instead, in recent years they have moved practices to Hjorth Road in Guildford during those wet days.
“The City didn’t want to invest in a new turf at Tom Binnie in case it was the site of the new arena,” according to Vienneau. “So now that the (arena) site is not there, I expect the turf to be replaced at the earliest possible time because they understand it’s not very good for us to not have that turf there.”
The existing turf at Tom Binnie is not up to CFL safety standards, he noted. “The CFL Players Association will not allow us to practice on that field. It has to have a certain amount of give, and that field it is hard as a rock. You might as well be practicing on concrete.”
In 2022 the Lions signed a five-year lease extension to keep the clubhouse and field at 10601 City Parkway until 2027. The club’s “partnering agreement” with the City of Surrey called for a negotiated rent of $1.39 million, or $580,698 below the appraised rent, on land acquired by the city in 1991.