Team has new owners but no field and no league

A trio of Ottawa investors has purchased the Ottawa Champions baseball team and says they are hopeful the team will return to the field next summer.

But the club’s return still depends on negotiating a new stadium lease with the city.

The lack of a lease prompted the Champions to be excluded when the Frontier and Can-Am leagues announced a merger Wednesday.

“We have secured an agreement with Miles Wolff for the Ottawa Champions (and) we look forward to meeting with the city to negotiate a new lease” for the Ottawa stadium on Coventry Road, said Ray Abboud.

Abboud said he and his partners Rob Lavoie and Fred Saghbini remain hopeful of being able to field a team in 2020, although he would not say who their opposition would be. Abboud is a financial planner, Lavoie runs local Play It Again Sports stores and Saghbini is in project management.

“All I can say is the fans will be pleased,” Abboud said.

Champions founder and longtime owner Miles Wolff confirmed the sale but stressed “it might not be worth anything until they have a new lease.”

Neither side would discuss the terms of the sale.

But Sam Katz, part of a group that has teamed with Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group to make their own bid for the right to play at the stadium, says those negotiations are continuing.

“What I can say is that the city has prepared some rigorous criteria on who they’re going to give the lease to, (and) we’re continuing to prepare that information,” Katz said in a telephone interview from Winnipeg.

Katz said the group has had communications with the city as well as email exchanges and remains committed to a bid.

He reiterated his group’s plan to mould a team that provides a total fan experience at the ballpark.

“I think we’ve established that we understand what it takes to market this kind of product,” said Katz, longtime owner of the Winnipeg Goldeyes, of the independent American Association of baseball. The Goldeyes club isn’t a part of the partnership with OSEG.

At a news conference Wednesday, the new 14-team Frontier League — which will include five teams from the Can-Am league — expressed optimism that the Champions could be admitted to an expanded 20-team Frontier League for the 2021 season.

“Ottawa was in the conversation (about a merger),” Frontier League commissioner Bill Lee told a news conference Wednesday.

“But the fact was they had no valid (stadium) lease.”

The Champions still owe the city about $463,000 and city manager Steve Kanellakos thinks the best way forward is to see what happens with the two groups vying for the baseball club.

Some councillors questioned the viability of baseball in Ottawa and others wanted the city to begin a larger study on community uses for the facility.

With files from Jon Willing. nprovencher@postmedia.com