Schooners, Admirals, Storm: Suggestions roll in for Halifax CFL team
Francis Campbell Chronicle Herald November 8 2018
The major hurdle in landing a CFL team in Halifax hasn’t changed in nearly 40 years.
“The most important question and the biggest elephant in the room is a place to play,” Anthony LeBlanc, one of three principal partners in Maritime Football Ltd., told a group of government officials and media at a news conference Wednesday afternoon at Saint Mary’s University to launch season-ticket and name-the-team drives.
The Atlantic Schooners, the Admirals, the Storm — a few of the names bandied about by LeBlanc at the news conference — need a field to call home.
“For this to become a reality, we have to have a stadium,” LeBlanc said. “We have started those conversations with Halifax Regional Municipality, with the province. We have been working an enormous amount of time on finding the right location. It took us longer than we expected but we couldn’t be happier with where we are right now.”
Where they are right now is Shannon Park. The group had previously announced it was negotiating with Canada Lands Company, the Crown corporation tasked with remediating and dispersing surplus military property, to secure an eight-hectare piece of land in Dartmouth’s Shannon Park on which to build a $190-million 24,000-seat stadium.
The ownership group plans to contribute a significant amount of private capital toward the purchase of the Shannon Park property and has approached HRM with a tax increment financing proposition in which the new stadium would provide a catalyst for other development in the park, with much of the property tax for the stadium and other developments being deferred to finance the stadium.
Municipal staff will do a number-crunching study and return to council with a recommendation in about six months.
Bruce Bowser, another principle Maritime Football Ltd. partner, said Shannon Park was his preferred site from Day 1.
“I grew up in the Shannon Park community, my father was in the military,” Bowser said of the site that had been used for military housing for a half-century before the federal Defence Department declared it surplus in 2003.
Bowser, president of AMJ Campbell Van Lines who now lives in Toronto, said the harbourside location could follow the the Lansdowne Park model, a 16-hectare urban park, sports, exhibition and entertainment facility in Ottawa that also provides a stadium for the CFL’s Redblacks to play.
“They’ve taken the whole notion of having a stadium outside of the city and put in a prime piece of land, which I think Shannon Park is. It’s on the waterfront. I use this notion of live, work and play. I can see a future where you have a football stadium anchoring a beautiful piece of land, with parkland around there, residential, condominiums and townhouses being built by the waterfront, restaurants making it a fun place to be.”
Support gets monetary
A team, even one shy of a stadium, requires a name and season-ticket holders.
“We are here today to announce that we are kicking off a season-ticket drive as well as an opportunity to name Atlantic Canada’s future CFL team,” LeBlanc said.
Fans can make a $50 deposit as of Wednesday to Ticketmaster.ca, ensuring them a place on the priority list for seat selection on a first-come, first-served basis. There’s a limit of 10 season tickets per account. A season-ticket membership also secures a ticket discount of 20 per cent to 40 per cent over the single-game ticket price.
LeBlanc said ticket prices will be announced in advance of the club’s inaugural season but he has hinted that tickets will range from $25 to $30 for a single ticket in the upper deck to several hundred dollars for club seating. The goal is to sell at least half the stadium seats as season tickets.
“If you make a season-ticket deposit, you’ll also be able to participate in selecting the name for Canada’s next CFL team,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc had previously said the team will be named Atlantic, followed by another name to be determined. Fans will be provided with a short list of four options — Admirals, Convoy, Schooners and Storm — as well as the opportunity to submit their own favourite name.
LeBlanc and company plan on announcing the team name on Nov. 23 at a Grey Cup party in Edmonton, simulcast back to Halifax. Those who select the winning team name will be entered into a pot and one person’s name will be drawn and awarded two lifetime season tickets.
League commissioner Randy Ambrosie said a CFL team in Halifax is the unfinished piece of business that has been on the hearts and minds of Canadian football fans for decades, “the opportunity to truly be a coast-to-coast league, to have that 10th franchise, to end up having two five-team divisions.”
LeBlanc said he will have a more concrete financial proposal to bring to city staff in the next three or four weeks. He said a stadium will take about 18 to 22 months to build, generating an estimated $137-million contribution to the municipality’s gross domestic product during construction, including $103 million in labour income.
LeBlanc said it is imperative that the stadium be used 12 months of the year and suggested two ideas to make that happen — a full-time ice rink in the centre of the field from Dec. 1 on that could be used for public skating and hockey programs or a dome that could accommodate other indoor sports.
LeBlanc said the goal is to field a team by 2021, with the possibility of starting a season in Moncton while the Halifax stadium is under construction.
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