MONCTON – As plans for a Halifax stadium matures, Maritime Football co-founder Anthony LeBlanc said it’s “absolutely” still possible for Moncton to be involved in the creation of an Atlantic Canadian CFL team.

LeBlanc and CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie toured Moncton’s stadium and the Avenir Centre with Mayor Dawn Arnold this summer.

“The key person who invited us was then premier Brian Gallant. So, we’re letting the dust settle, so to speak, after the interesting election cycle in New Brunswick. But, we’ve reached out to the economic development office indicating that we’d love to sit down with Premier Higgs to understand his desire to see this happen,” LeBlanc said in a phone interview with Huddle. “And we’ve certainly heard from the city of Moncton.”

Maritime Football is made up of former Arizona Coyotes co-owners LeBlanc and Gary Drummond, and Bruce Bowser, president of AMJ Campbell Van Lines. They plan to build a stadium in Halifax for an Atlantic Canadian CFL team to enter the league in 2021 or 2022 at the latest.

In an interview with Huddle in June, Mayor Dawn Arnold said Moncton’s involvement would show that the team is a regional effort.

“It would show the level of collaboration and team spirit that we have here. It could be a really positive thing to help out in this way and help enable [the Atlantic Canadian franchise] to be successful,” she said.

LeBlanc said Moncton is “first in line” in the region because it already has the “bones of a stadium” in place. The city had hosted CFL games for more than 20,000 fans. Its stadium, at the Université de Moncton, has a capacity of nearly 21,000 seats.

Obviously we’re going to need to understand who does what, but I think if there was a way to create the environment that was created a few years ago with the Touchdown Atlantic that was hosted there, with some temporary seatings put up in the end zones, yes, we’d be very, very interested,” he said.

“And excited to first off, starting maybe a year early in Moncton and of course involving Moncton moving forward after the Halifax stadium opens in regards to training camps and maybe pre-season games.”

Other communities, like Antigonish, which has a stadium at the St. Francis Xavier campus, could also host pre-season games, he said.

Maritime Football has so far reached about 50 per cent of its goal in a ticket drive launched last week to gauge the public’s appetite for the team, he said. With a 24,000-seat stadium planned in Halifax, Maritime Football hopes to get at least 10,000 of the $50 refundable seat deposits sold, and preferably reach 12,000.

“I would say especially with a marketing campaign coming, the Grey Cup, and of course the holiday season coming up…we think we’ll actually overachieve our goal,” LeBlanc said.

Funding for the stadium remains unclear, but a major hurdle was cleared after regional council directed city staff to do a business case analysis of the proposal. The stadium construction is expected to cost between $170 million and $190 million.

Maritime Football will be the owner and operator of the stadium as Halifax has said it’s not interested in doing so itself. The group is looking for funding assistance from the city and the province of Nova Scotia, but it has no plans to request a contribution from the current tax streams that feed the city’s general fund.

Instead, a tax agreement on the stadium, as well as possible increases to the hotel marketing levy tax and a new car rental tax are being proposed. All of these require legislative changes at the provincial level.

“We’re working with a plan that’s very familiar in both Halifax with tax incrementing, and they’ve utilized similar models in the past,” LeBlanc said. “We’re going to school not just on that model, but also models in Canada and the U.S. that have worked and haven’t worked. We’re being very cautious to assure that the risk is minimal.”

Maritime Football plans to file a funding proposal to Halifax in the next two to four weeks, he added. The group expects to contribute $5 million-to-$7 million a year to stadium expenses.

“What we’re trying to get to is where each party is in for a similar amount,” LeBlanc said. “Everybody knows there’s going to be some level of risks that have to be borne by the city, the province and the private sector. The question is what is the acceptable level of risk? And that’s really the exercise we’re doing right now and remember there are other players on the table.”

Shannon Park, where Maritime Football wants to build the stadium, is owned by Canada Land. It’s also located close to Millbrook First Nation, with whom Maritime Football expects “a strong partnership,” LeBlanc said.

The team name will be announced on November 23 during the Grey Cup, following a name-the-team contest. So far, Schooners and Storm are the strongest contenders, LeBlanc said.

With files from The Canadian Press