OTTAWA — The Ontario Court of Appeal will rule on Monday on the major court case over the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park, it announced Friday.

The case, a challenge of the city’s plans to work with a group of private developers and sports businessmen to renovate Frank Clair Stadium, add a park to part of the property and commercial and residential buildings to the rest, was heard in November. Residents and politicians alike have been impatiently awaiting the three-judge panel’s decision ever since.

The city’s opponents, the Friends of Lansdowne, argue that the deal with the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group amounts to an illegal subsidy of their business, that the agreement was reached in bad faith, and that it violated the city’s own procurement bylaw. After a trial last summer, Justice Charles Hackland ruled comprehensively in the city’s favour, but the Friends appealed on the grounds that Hackland made numerous legal errors in his decision.

There’s little legal precedent in Ontario for how public-private partnerships should be assessed; it’s illegal for a municipality to subsidize a private enterprise, but what constitutes a subsidy in a complex partnership isn’t clear. The only precedent is another ruling of Hackland’s.

The court typically gives one business day of notice of its reserved rulings, which is why notice came out Friday. The ruling should be released around noon on Monday.

Increasingly anxious city staff have been urging the city to move ahead with parts of the Lansdowne project that can be done independently of the partnership with OSEG. The whole thing is to be done by summer 2015, but court delays are squeezing that timeline hard. It’s not clear what would happen to the plans if either side tries to take the appeal court’s ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Also Friday, a Glebe man with an alternative vision for Lansdowne Park announced he’d filed papers seeking to appeal a court’s dismissal of his case. John Martin, proprietor of the Lansdowne Park Conservancy, says the city should have considered his proposal rather than rejecting it on the grounds that the Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group’s offer to the city included the unique element of a Canadian Football League franchise.

dreevely@ottawacitizen.com

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