Thread: 2018 CFL Season
View Single Post
  #118  
Old Posted Dec 31, 2017, 2:56 AM
elly63 elly63 is offline
Registered User
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 7,866
CFL in Halifax: A gamble with lots of field to cover
FRANCIS CAMPBELL The Chronicle Herald December 28, 2017

This is part one of a series on the possibility of a CFL franchise in Halifax.

PART TWO: Stadium talk dominates CFL expansion discussion

Third down and long.

Sports fans could not be blamed for ascribing those odds to a Canadian Football League expansion franchise in Halifax.

Jaded by past failure and sporadic expansion chatter that hasn’t gone anywhere, local fans might be too hasty in relegating the latest CFL expansion bid to the improbable bin.

“We feel that the odds are better than not,” said a guarded Anthony LeBlanc, one of three businessmen who front a company that is keen on pushing CFL expansion to the Maritimes over the goal-line this time around.

“There is a lot of work that needs to be done. We are taking a sizeable financial risk on our part. Business is a deal of risk-reward. We are certainly not at that point that anybody is saying this is approved and it’s moving forward.”

The New Brunswick-born LeBlanc was a longtime executive with Research in Motion and is the former president and chief executive of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League. Sharing the bulk of the initial financial risk with LeBlanc are Maritime Football Ltd. co-owners 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 had recent meetings with new CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie and the league’s board of governors, and an in-camera session with Mayor Mike Savage and the Halifax Regional Municipality’s city council.

“What we wanted this group to know is that we are very interested and excited about the opportunity to bring the Maritimes, the Atlantic region, into the Canadian Football League family,” said Ambrosie, an offensive guard for three CFL teams who was installed as the league’s 14th commissioner in July.

“We will support them to the very best of our abilities while recognizing that they have to drive the bus and, from time to time, we have to get out and push a little to help them move this along.”

If anyone is going to drive a CFL franchise into Halifax, they will require a stadium in which to park it. The lack of a stadium was the stumbling block after a group called the Maritime Professional Football Club Ltd. was granted a conditional expansion franchise in 1982.

That team, officially named the Atlantic Schooners, was to begin play in the 1984 season, but the ownership group was not able to meet the deadline with a financial plan for a necessary $6-million stadium slated to be built in Dartmouth. The franchise bid was withdrawn in 1983.

“The elephant in the room is the stadium,” said LeBlanc, who estimated a facility with a capacity of somewhere in the vicinity of 25,000 would be required.

Ambrosie said the league is committed to collaborating with the ownership group as “they work through a process of working with the city, the province and perhaps the federal government on a facility.”

“Obviously, that is the big question that has to get answered,” Ambrosie said.

But it doesn’t appear as if much of the funding will be coming from public coffers.

“There has always been mixed feelings on the idea of a stadium and even a CFL team,” Savage said. “Interestingly enough, when this one surfaced, many people, including people on council who had been skeptical, said this deserves a chance.

“I think there is a lot of potential for a team and a stadium here, but I don’t think there is much appetite on council for something that we have to sink a lot of capital dollars into right up front. We need to be a little more creative than that. That’s what I have told the (ownership group) and they are working on that.”

LeBlanc said the ownership group has commissioned Deloitte Halifax to prepare a third-party analysis of the benefits a stadium could bring to the city and province.

“We’re being very, very thoughtful in our approach with the city and the province in trying to construct a true public-private partnership,” LeBlanc said. “It’s not just a CFL stadium; it will be a multi-use stadium.”

Potential locations bandied about include Bayers Lake Business Park, the former Shannon Park military community on the Dartmouth side of the MacKay bridge, a Dartmouth Crossing site, and property that is part of the Halifax Commons.

“I think there are a lot of football fans in HRM and I think there are a lot of concert fans in HRM,” Savage said. “I think there are a lot of people who would come to different types of sporting events. By and large, the support could come from here, but I think you do need to supplement that with interest from around the region. It’s there as well.”

Rick Rivers has long been involved in coaching and administration of minor football at the provincial and national level.

“I think there are enough (fans) to make it a go,” he said of a potential CFL expansion franchise. “I think there has to be a starting point. I’ve watched football grow here since I came here in 1969. . . . I think it should definitely have a Maritime flavour because we want to get the people from New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.”

Jeff Cummins, the head football coach at Acadia University for the past 14 seasons, is not convinced of the viability of the CFL in Halifax.

“It would be great, but I don’t know how real it is,” Cummins said.

“There is no stadium and I don’t think there is an appetite from the public to build one. It’s not that people are clamouring for football in the Maritimes. It’s not like people are screaming and yelling that they want football. My concern is the support and, do they find it.”

Ambrosie said the expansion bid is in its infancy, but he remains optimistic.

LeBlanc said in addition to hiring Deloitte and legal representation from McInnes Cooper in Halifax, the ownership group engaged Corporate Research Associates to do detailed polling.

“The results that came back were really positive, that people want to go to a game,” he said.

Earlier this month, the legal team secured the trademark name Atlantic Schooners. The trademark provides Maritime Football Ltd. with control over intellectual property associated with the Schooners name, such as licence plate holders, athletic wear and football figurines.

LeBlanc said the trademark was acquired in case the ownership group decided to use it in future.

“We are getting to the point where we’re ready to spend real money, when you are bringing in companies like Deloitte, law firms, when you are doing serious government relations,” LeBlanc said.

“We at least have the level of comfort that we know we are doing this with 100-per-cent risk of our own personal investment to keep this thing moving along and we continue to do so.”

The best-case scenario would have the league grant the ownership group a conditional franchise as early as next year, with an expansion team on a new stadium field in the Halifax area by the 2020 or 2021 season.

LeBlanc was circumspect when asked about the likelihood of that happening.

“It is so difficult to say. Some days, I feel it’s 100 per cent. Some days, I feel it’s 50 per cent.”
Reply With Quote