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The home opener against the Toronto Argonauts is already sold out, and OSEG says more than 16,000 season tickets have been sold.

OSEG is hoping to sell 15,000 tickets for the Ottawa Fury home opener on July 20.

Saturday in the park with Jim

The new urban park adjacent to the Rideau Canal is the second phase of Lansdowne expected to open this summer, with an old-fashioned community picnic set for Sat., Aug. 16.

There will be an old-school carousel, games, food, and lots of room to lay down a picnic blanket or toss a Frisbee — something Watson said was not possible at the old Lansdowne.

“It really was a misnomer to call Lansdowne Park a park,” he said.

The new park will have triple the amount of green space, an apple orchard, children’s play area, benches, shrubs and 800 trees when it’s completed.

The push is on now to get the great lawn sodded by kickoff on the 18th.

Hey, big spender

Lansdowne’s retail component will open on a staggered basis, starting with discount retailer Winners on Oct. 16.

Whole Foods and Sporting Life are expected to open in late November, followed by the restaurants Local and Joey in December or January.

Good Life will open its new fitness centre in January — in time for those New Year’s resolutions, as will the glitzy, 10-screen Cineplex — in time for Oscar season.

Show us the money

The city didn’t provide a budget update, but the Lansdowne design and construction manager says costs are on target.

“Anybody reasonable that’s done any sort of significant construction projects understands there are always extras that come up. I think we’ve done a very good managing them and once we reconcile these numbers, we’ll show everybody where we’re at exactly, but it’s tracking well,” Marco Manconi said, adding a 10 per cent overrun on a project of this size is standard in the industry.