Stadium will make or break Halifax’s CFL bid
FRANCIS CAMPBELL The Chronicle Herald January 5, 2018
New attempt after 1982 bid foundered
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part eight of a series on the latest attempt to bring a CFL team to Halifax.
PART 1: CFL in Halifax: A gamble with lots of field to cover
PART 2: Stadium talks dominates CFL expansion discussion
PART 3: Halifax CFL franchise would make football a coast-to-coast sports, says commissioner
PART 4: Would Halifax support pro football?
PART 5: Roughriders show that CFL fan support can be province-wide
PART 6: Retired CFL pros want to see Halifax team
PART 7: Could a public-private partnership secure a CFL stadium?
The time is now for the Canadian Football League to expand to Halifax.
But the same was said 35 years ago when the Atlantic Schooners were ready to chart a course for the Eastern Division of the CFL. Plans and money ran short, and despite having been granted a conditional expansion franchise in 1982 that was to give rise to a team taking the field two years later, the ownership group eventually withdrew its bid.
Back in the 80’s
“Going back to the ’80s, you had a team that was working with the CFL and the CFL was kind of keen on it,” said Mike Savage, mayor of the Halifax Regional Municipality. “Ever since then, people have kind of popped up and said we should have a team but what they are missing is the business case for a stadium.”
That business case is the rocky shoal on which the Schooners foundered and eventually ran aground. In May 1982, the CFL’s board of governors unanimously approved a conditional expansion franchise for the Halifax area. The team would pay a $1.5-million expansion fee by the next May and take the field for the 1984 season if a 30,000-seat stadium were built in time to host a home opener.
The Maritime Professional Football Club Ltd. ownership group initially included John Donoval, a Toronto-area trucking executive, and J.I. Albrecht, the eccentric former general manager of the Toronto and Montreal CFL teams. Later, Robert Bruce Cameron, a New Glasgow-born industrialist who had served in the Second World War before starting several businesses that included Maritime Steel and Foundries in his hometown, joined the ownership group.
The proposed team, given the name the Schooners by November 1982, planned to hire Acadia Axemen head coach John Huard to guide the franchise in its first season. A league expansion draft was planned and details were worked out for the dispersal of players from existing franchises to staff the Schooners.
The $6-million stadium was to be built on leased land in Dartmouth but the federal and provincial governments were not amenable to providing any funding for the facility. Despite considerable contributions from Cameron, the ownership group was unable to meet league deadlines for a financing plan for the new stadium.
Will CFL hunger set the table for a stadium?
Subsequently, the best bet for a stadium may have been the scuttled bid for Halifax to host the 2014 Commonwealth Games. Halifax was selected as the Canadian bid city in December 2005 for the 2014 Games but when the bid society was unable to pare the estimate for hosting the Games from $1.6 billion to a preferred $1 billion, the province and the municipality withdrew their support. The Halifax bid withered and the Games were eventually awarded to Glasgow, Scotland.
“The thing that bothers me is that this city does not have the gonads,” said Rick Rivers, who has been a football coach and administrator at the local, provincial and national level since moving to Halifax from Ontario nearly 40 years ago.
“A few years back we won the Commonwealth Games bid; we should have a stadium as a result of that. The federal government, the provincial and local governments, would come together. They got cold feet and left it.”
Savage recalled that, last time, a stadium was seriously considered.
“It was a third federal, a third provincial and a third municipal,” the mayor said. “Basically, the entire capital cost was being borne by levels of government with upfront capital payments. I don’t think there is an appetite for that and, actually, there wasn’t back then either because it didn’t happen.”
Still, another bid for a CFL expansion franchise has surfaced, this time from the Maritime Football Ltd. ownership group, led by New Brunswick-born businessman Anthony LeBlanc, a longtime executive with Research in Motion and the former president and chief executive of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League. Also on the team are Bruce Bowser, a Halifax native who is president of AMJ Campbell Van Lines, and Gary Drummond, a businessman from Regina who was president of hockey operations with the Coyotes during LeBlanc’s tenure there.
The group has met with the CFL and with the HRM city council. They have spent considerable personal funds on a poll to gauge fan interest, a cost-benefit analysis and legal representation. They hope to soon test season ticket sales and attract corporate sponsors.
“I think it’s fair to say that we need to either get this done or come to a decision that it is not doable,” LeBlanc said. “But we are certainly not looking at it in that (not doable) manner.”
Savage acknowledged that the business group is doing a lot of work behind the scenes.
“There isn’t anything at this point to present to council but we certainly are hopeful and anticipate that when they have formulated a plan, particularly around a stadium, that they’ll come forward. They are a serious group of people, they know what they are doing and I have a lot of faith in their ability to make this happen.”
LeBlanc said the capital structure and ownership of the stadium has not yet been discussed.
“Usually what happens is there is a public-private entity that owns and operates the facility,” LeBlanc said. “That’s kind of getting ahead of ourselves. From our perspective, the perspective of the ownership group of the franchise, we certainly understand that we are going to have to participate in the ownership, or at least the money that goes into building a stadium. Who operates or owns it, those are things that will get figured out.”
Savage doesn’t figure on the city owning it.
“As a municipality, we don’t want to own a stadium,” Savage said. “If you build a stadium, then you have to run it. I don’t think governments are ideally suited to do that. The idea would be that somebody would own it and run it. I think that is where you have your concerts instead of tearing up the Commons. You could have games, whether it is the Indigenous Games, the Senior Games, the University Games, the Commonwealth Games, all those kinds of things.”
If it was built
Moshe Lander, a Concordia University professor who specializes in the economics of sports, said a stadium would have limited use.
“If you end up with a stadium, how else is it going to be used other than the 10 times a year for the CFL?” Lander said. “Are you really going to have outdoor concerts in a 30,000-40,000-seat stadium? Are you going to have an MLS (Major League Soccer) franchise in Halifax? It’s unlikely. That sort of economics is that it’s going to be used 10 times, you might be able to squeeze a few other uses out of it. Other than that, it is going to sit primarily empty. So, who bears the cost if it is sitting empty?
What then, if anything, is different this time around from previous CFL rumblings?
“It’s definitely different,” Savage said. “Whether it’s different enough, we’ll find out.
“Getting an arrangement with the CFL whereby they would come here would take some work but it is very manageable. Putting an ownership group together for a team is a little more difficult but manageable. Getting the stadium, that’s the ballgame. That’s the jackpot right there.”
Lander said the difference from 35 years ago could be the growth of the city.
“Halifax is not going to build itself up to a world-class city but it’s certainly a very respectable Canadian city as an anchor of Atlantic Canada,” Lander said. “You can see the beginning of the high-rise developments that are starting to surface on the skyline, corporate headquarters that are starting to locate to Halifax or locate offices there. Lower Water is becoming more of a younger-trending area. Incomes are rising and it’s moved away from the stereotype old-fashioned fishing town to something a little more modern and dynamic.
“Now is the time to be a professional sports city. This is probably it. You are not going to be an NHL town, you are not going to have an NFL team, you are not even going to have MLS, so this is kind of the last missing piece.”