Bringing back the Expos is going to take time
City well positioned for expansion, but Montreal fans have to be patient
If Major League Baseball is indeed wending its way back to Montreal, it is doing so at the pace of one of those interminable post-season games we saw in October — one stately, cautious step at a time.
That, of course, is as it should be. As it has to be. Stephen Bronfman and Mitch Garber know precisely what they’re doing. They’re the twin engines behind the effort to bring the Expos back to town and they understand that this can’t be done in haste, or with a noisy public beating of the drums.
It’s the same in every sport: The Lords of the Leagues operate like medieval monarchs, dispensing a favour here, refusing one there. Annoy them and they will leave you twisting in the wind. (See that beautiful hockey arena in Quebec City, the one spurned by the NHL.) Play by their rules and you might be the lucky recipient of a costly franchise. (See Gary Bettman bestowing his largesse on Las Vegas and Seattle while thumbing his nose at Quebec.)
True, baseball’s Rob Manfred is roughly 100 times more likable that Bettman, Roger Goodell or his own predecessor, Bud Selig Jr. — but they all operate in much the same way. Ultimately, Major League Baseball will decide whether Montreal gets another franchise. All Bronfman, Garber and their partners can do is to get all their ducks in a row, do what needs to be done and remain patient.
At least there was movement on multiple fronts last week, coinciding with the baseball winter meetings in Las Vegas. First Manfred sent a letter to Florida’s Hillsborough, making it clear that he is unhappy with the lack of details on the merits of a new ballpark at the eastern end of Tampa.
Then Tampa Rays owner Stuart Sternberg, normally about as gabby as J.D. Salinger, held a frank 30-minute news conference in Vegas at which he made it crystal clear that he, too, is unhappy with progress toward a new ballpark for the Rays and there is a point at which his patience will run out.
With less than two weeks now remaining until the deadline to pinpoint a ballpark site in Tampa’s Ybor City area, Sternberg says he is reopening the search for a suitable location and that with a new park not on the horizon before 2024 at the earliest, the Rays are nearing the 2027 date when their current lease at Tropicana Field expires.
“We’ll continue to look in Tampa Bay and we’ll put our efforts to that,” he said during a news conference Tuesday at the winter meetings. “One way or another, we need to figure out where the team is going to be in 2028, if not sooner. Ideally sooner. But absolutely by 2028.”
The Tampa Sports Authority has offered the Rays 50 per cent of funding for a new park, with the offer not to exceed $475 million U.S. — but Manfred says the funding commitment and the timetable are both uncertain.
Manfred has already said that, with Montreal and Portland seeking teams, baseball will not expand until new ballparks are found for the Rays and Oakland A’s. The A’s have announced plans for a new downtown stadium and are working for approvals. If that deal falls apart, there’s always Portland — and the same situation exists with the Rays and Montreal.
Is Montreal being played here? Used to extort a new stadium in Florida, the way Washington was once used in the attempt to get taxpayers to build a park for either Claude Brochu or Jeffrey Loria?
The answer is probably affirmative — but then Washington did eventually haul in the Expos, to our everlasting sorrow. The possibility exists that, with other uses already marked for the Tropicana Field site, the Rays could escape their lease and head north sooner than 2028.
Meanwhile, a market study commissioned by the potential ownership group headed by Bronfman and Garber concluded that Montreal would be the most feasible of the potential expansion sites in North America.
Montreal’s television market would rank 12th out of 27 current markets and Montreal would rank 15th in metropolitan-area population, 18th in median household income and 19th among corporations with annual sales of at least $5 million or a minimum of 25 employees. Executives interviewed backed the project and said the ideal ballpark would be downtown, seat 35,000 or fewer and have a “social atmosphere, a design that fits the local architectural style and be a year-round destination.”
That means a stadium with a removable roof — the only way this project is going to fly, anyway.
“We have the right plan,” Bronfman said, “to build our business plan even better.”
Inevitably, events this week put Tampa in the forefront of the discussion.
“We don’t really know what is happening in Tampa, but it clearly leads one to believe that things could move faster than we thought,” Bronfman said. “That’s good. But we are also ready for an expansion project. We are ready for anything.”
Even so, don’t book your hotel rooms at spring training just yet. Even if it works, this is (like a World Series game) going to take a while.
One way or another, we need to figure out where the team is going to be in 2028 …