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The ball has not been fumbled on the Halifax bid for a Canadian Football League franchise even if the down-field march appears stalled, says Anthony LeBlanc, one of three principal owners of Schooners Sports.

“Do we feel confident that we are moving things along, yeah,” LeBlanc told an editorial board meeting of The Chronicle Herald on Wednesday.

“It’s frustrating that it takes longer than you expect but at the same time, we are not looking at building a house. It’s pretty complex.”

The group is looking to build a $130-million stadium and parking space on an eight-hectare plot of land to be purchased in Shannon Park. Canada Lands is the federal Crown corporation tasked with managing and redeveloping surplus military properties, including the entire 35-hectare Shannon Park site on the north side of Dartmouth by Halifax harbour.

“We are fully engaged with Canada Lands,” LeBlanc said, adding that Schooners Sports and the Crown corporation are going to the market to find an independent third-party real estate evaluator. The tender has been sent out and the responses should come in as early as next week, he said.

A recent Canada Lands release said a master redevelopment plan prepared for the park in 2015 and 2016 did not include a stadium site so the Crown corporation requires Schooners Sports and Halifax Regional Municipality to further engage with the community on any proposed new use.

Sam Austin, representing the neighbouring district of Dartmouth Centre on Halifax regional council, said nothing has changed.

“In terms of the location, there was an extensive planning consultation that went into Shannon Park and if we were going to change things up, there would have to be new consultation on that,” Austin said.

Schooners Sports is to present a detailed business plan to the municipality but that plan is predicated on completion of the Canada Lands deal, LeBlanc said.

Your beer may go warm waiting for this review

Brendan Elliott, a spokesman for the municipality, said it will take municipal staff some time to go through any Schooners’ proposal before presenting it to council.

“Ultimately, it will be council’s decision on how to proceed, based on the details that are in the business plan,” Elliott said. “We don’t have a business plan yet.”

Jacques Dube, the chief administrative officer for the municipality, has said in the past that it will take staff six months to pore over a formal proposal once it is received.

Then, Dube said the municipality would be in a position to start looking at the service impacts, estimating the service costs and delving into the tax increment financing zone model and whether a car rental tax and a dedicated portion of a hotel room levy could actually cover debt financing.

The car rental tax and hotel levy would require changes to provincial legislation and LeBlanc said Schooners Sports will make a presentation to the province in conjunction with delivering its business plan to the municipality.

“Just wait until it comes and we deal with it,” Austin said of the business plan. “The only direction that council has ever given on this is ‘dear staff, please analyze the business case when it comes.’ Everything else is media swirl.”

LeBlanc and Jamie Ferguson, chief executive of Sport Nova Scotia, moved focus beyond swirl Wednesday to their recently formed partnership.

“We are all about getting more kids involved,” Ferguson said of his non-profit umbrella group that promotes health and personal development through sport.

The dialed-back community stadium that LeBlanc and his group are now championing will have 12,000 permanent seats on one side of the artificial turf and another 12,000 temporary seats at the ready on the other sideline. When not in use for professional football, the field, including an air-inflated dome to cover it in colder months, can accommodate minor sports activity.

“For us to be able to provide facility time at no cost is huge and I think it is unprecedented,” Ferguson said.

Ferguson said minor soccer, football and rugby associations and the school athletics associations could occupy the field for 25 weeks of evenings and weekends and that number could rise to 300 days a year when other groups are added.

The money the CFL team would make on its 10 or so game dates a year would offset the free usage for minor sports. LeBlanc said general tax dollars will not be used to fund the stadium and his group will be responsible for maintaining and operating it.

LeBlanc said it will take 18 to 24 months to build a stadium and that a CFL team could not grace the Shannon Park field until the 2022 season, although the team could operate out of Moncton starting in the 2021 season.

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