Howard Sokolowski still struggles to talk about it.

“I’m still heartbroken,” he said. “It was my greatest real estate failure. A real estate failure of epic proportions.”

Successful developers like Sokolowski rarely speak that way about projects that don’t work out. After all, there’s always another location to build, another plot of land to be used.

But in this case, there wasn’t.

It was the dream of Sokolowski and David Cynamon, who owned the Argonauts from 2003 to 2010, to move the Argonauts to a rebuilt Varsity Stadium on the grounds of the University of Toronto.

A historic and intimate 25,000-seat downtown stadium right on the Bloor subway line with a glorious view of the city. A grass field. Security for the CFL in Toronto, something that seems to be a growing worry these days for the Argos with the possibility that grass will eventually be installed for the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, thus cutting the Argos out of the picture.

In 2004, Varsity (torn down in 2002) would have been rebuilt for the cost of about $70 million, which seems like peanuts now, particularly when you consider that back in 2004, the federal and provincial governments were prepared to cover half the cost and Sokolowski and Cynamon were going to be on the hook for $20 million.

It seemed like the perfect plan for the CFL to thrive in Toronto, particularly with the Montreal Alouettes having flourished with a similar situation at McGill University.

But it never happened.

As the Argonauts held an exhibition game Thursday night at the 5,000-seat Varsity Centre that was built in 2007, Sokolowski still sounded frustrated with his inability to make it all happen.

“Ultimately, we failed,” he said. “I find it bittersweet that they’re playing an exhibition game there. The Argos should have been there on a permanent basis.”

As with many projects that fail to reach fruition, there are many versions as to who did what and why it didn’t work. For Sokolowski, he traces the failure of the plan back to the decision by U of T president Robert Birgeneau back in 2004, when the project seemed most alive, to abruptly leave the university.

“(Birgeneau) was our champion. He loved football and he understood the project,” he said. “We were rebuilding Varsity. We weren’t reinventing the wheel.”

Birgeneau left, and the plan began attracting opponents, like renowned academic and author Margaret McMillan, and the Annex ratepayers association. Sokolowski says the interim U of T administration, led by former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci, simply considered it too hot a potato with which to deal.

“The opposition to the rebuild of Varsity just became so loud, it was impossible,” said Sokolowski. “When you don’t have a champion on a controversial situation, it’s very difficult.

“It still hurts that we couldn’t make that happen.”

Instead, Sokolowski and Cynamon, both York University alumni, turned their eyes to their former school. If politics wrecked the Varsity deal, Sokolowski blames only himself for not following through on the plan to build at York.

“We got a call from Ted Rogers saying, ‘Please don’t leave the Rogers Centre,’” recalled Sokolowski. “He said there will be no rent. Just stay. And David Braley, who I always went to for counsel on CFL matters, was adamant we should stay at the dome. So we did.

“But we should have done the York deal. I think Argos would have been better at Keele and Steeles in a perfectly intimate 25,000-seat stadium. We could have still done Grey Cups at Rogers Centre.

“I wear it. It’s my responsibility. In hindsight, I would have done York. Argos would be on a healthier platform than they are today.”

A later possibility of playing at BMO Field, finally, was killed when then mayor David Miller strongly believed it should be a soccer-only facility.

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All three options — Varsity, York, BMO — would have been better for the Argos than remaining at Rogers Centre and generally attracting crowds of 25,000 or less, about half the capacity of the dome.

But Varsity was the gem, the best idea, the one that would have tied the team to the city in a lasting, intimate way.

“I’m still really sad about it,” said Sokolowski. “The ghost of Dave Mann still haunts me because of that failure.”