Schooners finalizing business plan for HRM
Francis Campbell The Halifax Chronicle Herald June 29 2019
The bid to bring the Canadian Football League and a community stadium to Halifax has not moved the ball forward in recent months but behind-the-scenes analysis is expected to heat up after Canada Day.
“Schooners Sports and Entertainment (SSE) is working diligently to finalize a business plan and we anticipate presenting a proposal to senior staff at the Halifax Regional Municipality in the very near term,” Jim Armour, president of Summa Strategies, an Ottawa public relations firm working with SSE, said in an email.
“The proposal will address areas of concern that have been raised by the community and it will be validated by independent, third-party experts.”
SSE is the ownership group that wants to bring a 10th CFL team, the Atlantic Schooners, to Halifax.
Jacques Dube, chief administrative officer for HRM, said Wednesday that his group awaits the full proposal from Schooners Sports.
“We’re waiting for that so that we can start working on the evaluation and the feasibility analysis and the impacts,” Dube said. “That’s about a six-month process. If we get it (proposal) in early July that means we will probably get something before council by December.”
CFL talk regarding Halifax reignited in earnest some two years ago. The ownership group acquired the Atlantic Schooners trademark and approached the league about a conditional franchise. Anthony LeBlanc, former president of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League and one of three principal owners of SSE, originally projected a 24,000-seat stadium to be built at a cost of $190 million.
The stadium objective was later tempered to 12,000 permanent seats with a capability of adding 12,000 more temporary seats. The adjusted price tag for the community stadium is $130 million.
Through an agreement with Sport Nova Scotia, the stadium could accommodate minor sports when it is not in use for professional football. The field, including an air-inflated dome to cover it in colder months, could serve as a facility for minor soccer, football and rugby associations and school sports for 200 to 300 days a year.
SSE has been negotiating with Canada Lands, the federal Crown corporation tasked with managing and redeveloping surplus military properties, for the purchase of an eight-hectare plot of land in the 33-hectare Shannon Park site by Halifax harbour.
LeBlanc has said that SSE will be heavily involved on the financial side of the stadium and will take on the operational costs. The proposed municipal financial contribution would come from a public financing plan used as a subsidy for redevelopment, infrastructure and debt financing. A Tax Increment Financing plan would have some of the entire Shannon Park area reallocating funds from property taxes on area developments to pay the stadium's debt charges.
It has been suggested that the province’s financial contribution to a stadium could come in the form of legislative changes to allow HRM to collect car rental fees and hotel room levies.
“There are a lot of moving parts with this one,” Dube said. “There is also a discussion with the province and the private sector and the land owner.”
Chris Millier, real estate director for Canada Lands, said the land being considered for the community stadium is in the northeast portion of the Shannon Park property, adjacent to the railway tracks, land that had been identified primarily for commercial/employment with accessory residential uses in a 2016 park concept plan.
“CLC (Canada Lands) is requiring SSE to undertake public consultation regarding the proposed development of a community stadium,” Millier said by email. “CLC and SSE have entered into a letter of intent that establishes conditions that must be met before a commercial transaction can be considered, including a formal request being made to CLC by Halifax Regional Municipality and the province of Nova Scotia to accommodate the proposed use at Shannon Park.”
Dube said there is a lot of work to be done in terms of determining “any operating impacts on our municipal services – fire, police, transit and everything else.”
"We’re not willing to take on any risk, so we’ve got to put a barrier around, a firewall around the risk factors,” Dube said. “We don’t want to take any construction risk, financial risk, contractual risk in making this work. Hopefully, we’ll get a proposal and get to work on evaluating it.”
Armour said SSE and Canada Lands have engaged a number of world-class organizations to ensure that “we have considered all possible factors in the design, development and operation of a multi-use sports and entertainment facility.”
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