Stadium news from our Cascadian brothers today, as both the Whitecaps and Timbers have some announcements and renderings concerning their stadiums.

Up to the North we find out that the temporary facility looks better than many of the permanent stadiums down here. The Empire Fields site will be used for all of 2010, and part of 2011 as BC place goes through its major rennovation. At one point Garber was surprised by the need for a temporary stadium, but honestly if it is this good, it would be better than PizzaHut Park, Crew Stadium and puts it on class with BMO Field. Duane wonders, and I concur, why not just stay at the temporary site?

Down South, the Timbersfinally have some renderings with of their field. They will have seating at either 20,000 or 24,000 with improvements to nearly all aspects of the stadium. The nearly century old baseball stadium will bean adequete MLS stadium, and have better capacity than most MLS SSS. Notable is that they still mention that there will be 250 events there a year. How do they get to that without AAA baseball?

Lastly, note that in BOTH cases the playing surface will be one that is hated by most MLS fans - Field Turf. Considering that both sites will be used by more than just soccer, I prefer good Turf over situations like we saw in Houston.