After 30 years, Quebecers are months away from paying off the mortgage on Montreal's Olympic Stadium — a landmark neither the city nor the province say they want to own.
Built for the 1976 Summer Olympics, the 58,500-seat stadium cost an estimated $1.5 billion.
Provincial officials believe it will be fully paid off this year.
"We think we'll be finished with the last payment most probably during the end of the summer," said Sylvie Bastien, with the Olympic Installations Board, which oversees the stadium.
But paying off the debt has triggered heated negotiations between the province and the city of Montreal.
The city is supposed to take ownership of the stadium when it's paid off.
Municipal officials say they don't want it.
"We don't want to be the owner of the stadium," said Francine Senecal, the city's executive committee member responsible for sports and leisure.
Senecal, who says the stadium runs a deficit of millions of dollars each year, says it belongs to all Quebecers.
Provincial officials are tight-lipped about their plans.
Tourism Minister Francoise Gauthier says the issue won't be resolved in the short-term.
The longtime home of the Montreal Expos until the team was sold to Washington, D.C., the stadium was nicknamed the Big O, or, because of its cost, the Big Owe.
It opened for baseball in 1977 without a roof, which was added about 10 years later. In 1991, a 55-tonne chunk of the roof fell after support beams snapped. No one was injured.
A second section of the roof collapsed in the winter of 1999 as workers were setting up for the auto show.
Officials were considering installing another new roof in 2006.