Halifax sees 2021 as a target date for league entry
2021 ‘realistic’ target for CFL in Maritimes
What a few years ago seemed more like a pipe dream, a coastto-coast Canadian Football League could become an on-field reality by the 2020 season.
While the “stars would have to align” and there are plenty of hurdles to climb over, a strong Maritime bid to for the CFL’s 10th team could pay off in the next few months with CFL approval and shovels in the ground on a new stadium in Halifax before the end of the year.
“Everything needs to go right and I’ve never been involved in a project where that happens,” said Anthony LeBlanc, an Ottawa resident and the frontman for the Maritime bid. “Sure, we have desires, then there’s reality.
“We’ll spend the better part of 2018 doing all the approvals and everything that’s necessary in starting to build a stadium. Best case: in the next six to eight months, we’ll have everything wrapped up. Best-case scenario, we have a team on the field by 2020, but that’s a real stretch. I think 2021 is more realistic. Just as long as we get it done. I don’t want it to be 2025 and we’re still talking about this. By the end of 2018, if we don’t have some shovels in the ground or at least real strong approvals, I’d be getting concerned.”
LeBlanc understands there will be questions. Is it fiscally responsible for the governments involved? Does it make good business sense?
“There are people questioning if this is the right thing to do,” said LeBlanc. “That’s totally fair. If you’re a taxpayer and you think your taxpayer dollars aren’t being used correctly, you should have the ability to question it. The onus is on us to illustrate this is a good economic driver.”
LeBlanc was part of a group that owned the Arizona Coyotes before being bought out by partner Andrew Barroway. LeBlanc was the Coyotes’ president, CEO and an alternate governor. When it looked like a solid bet that Barroway would take over, LeBlanc and Gary Drummond, the team’s president of hockey operations, started talking about the CFL.
“He’s from Regina and obviously a big fan of the CFL,” said LeBlanc. “We thought, ‘Where do we start?’ I called Bobby Smith. He owns the (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League’s Halifax) Mooseheads and he’s a former GM of the Coyotes. We got together. I wanted to make sure he was cool with it. I didn’t want to do anything that was offensive to the Mooseheads operation. He said, ‘No, this would be great for the region.’
“I asked if he’d be interested. He said, ‘Probably not, but you should talk to my cousin.’ It turns out his cousin Richard Butts was the city manager for Halifax. Richard put together a bunch of meetings for me to fly into Halifax. I met with the chamber of commerce, the local economic development group and the mayor (Mike Savage). The mayor said, ‘We’ve had a lot of people come through our doors over the years and they just don’t seem to understand that we can’t just go out and build a stadium. We want to be part of it, but we can’t lead it.’”
The mayor hooked LeBlanc up with another businessman, AMJ Campbell Van Lines CEO Bruce Bowser, who had also shown recent interest in a CFL team in the Maritimes.
“We met with the mayor, we met with the premier,” said LeBlanc. “We were pretty successful with keeping it quiet for four months or so.”
Will football work in Halifax? Can a CFL team find success and maybe extend itself beyond not only Halifax and Nova Scotia’s borders, but into neighbouring Maritime provinces?
“If we do things right, if we’re sincere and in for the long haul — all things we plan to be — we do think we can replicate that magic you see out in Regina,” said LeBlanc. “I think this will be an absolute success.” Twitter.com/TimCBaines