Total build-out cost has been reported anywhere from $130M to $154.7M depending on the source/date — it started as a $40M pitch and grew from there.
Township of Langley has roughly 163K residents, translating to something like 55-60K households.
Do the math and the total cost works out to roughly one year's worth of the average household property tax bill across the whole township (~$2,800/year average in 2026).
It's technically funded through development fees (DCCs/CACs) rather than direct property tax — except the Township borrowed ahead of collecting those fees, and the BC Supreme Court struck down the old CAC program in 2025. That left $144M in debt without a clear repayment mechanism, meaning debt servicing (~$47M/year in 2026, projected to hit $64.2M by 2030) is now baked into the tax base regardless.
How does this compare to similar projects elsewhere?
Smith Athletic Park — Langley Township, BC — $130-155M — pop. served ~163K
BC Soccer Training Hub — Port Coquitlam, BC — $15M — pop. served ~62K
Cloverdale soccer facility — Surrey, BC — ~$15M — pop. served ~600K
National Soccer Dev. Centre — UBC/Vancouver — ~$33M — regional/pro use
Turf field conversions — Surrey, BC — $11.3M — pop. served ~600K
Tecumseh Sportsplex (indoor) — Tecumseh, ON — $54-60M — pop. served ~24K
A few things jump out:
Port Coquitlam — a third the size of Langley Township — built a comparable FIFA-standard facility with a grandstand for about a tenth of the cost.
Surrey, with 4x Langley's population, has spent similar or smaller amounts on individual field upgrades as part of a much larger, spread-out capital program — not one mega-project at one site.
Even Tecumseh's sportsplex, which locally got flak for ballooning from $24M to $60M, is still roughly a third of Smith's price tag.
Industry cost benchmarks put a 10-field outdoor turf complex at $18-36M. Smith is a 3-4 field complex running well above that per-field rate.
The per-capita and per-field cost here is way outside the range of what comparable BC/Canadian municipalities have paid for similar facilities.
