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Halifax City Council will today review a new report on a proposed 24,000-seat stadium, a key component of a Canadian Football League's bid for the largest city on the east coast.
Maritime Football Limited Partnership, a group of business executives and former owners of an NHL team, is in the process of acquiring a conditional expansion franchise for CFLs.
The group proposed Shannon Park, a 38-hectare strip of land located on the east side of Halifax Harbor, formerly used by the Department of Defense for housing, as the site of choice for the multipurpose stadium.
An urban planning expert said the discussion would inevitably become polarized for the community, with expensive stadium projects often generating vigorous public debate.
Maritime Football is in talks with the Canada Lands Company to purchase up to eight hectares of land for the stadium, a parking structure and "badociated uses," says the staff report.
The new football team would be the stadium's main tenant, whose price is estimated at $ 190 million.
However, part of this cost should be financed by public funds. City staff said the province's involvement as a financial partner was "essential".
The report recommends an in-depth review of Maritime Football's business case, as well as changes to the city's charter to eventually allow for a special fiscal arrangement and to help finance the project through debt, pending the result of the badysis of the business case.
The report also recommends engaging with the province on "new and additional sources of revenue," such as increasing the hotel marketing tax or creating a new tax on car rentals.
Jino Distasio, director of the Institute of Urban Studies at the University of Winnipeg, said major projects such as stadiums are often polarizing.
"They attract a lot of interest from the public and often this interest can be polarized with either very big supporters, or against those who fiercely oppose any kind of public funds injected into what is perceived as the pockets rich and wealthy owners, "he said.
"It's not uncommon to have a lively debate."
He spoke of the controversy in Winnipeg over Investors Group's Field Stadium. Earlier this year, the University of Manitoba said it would probably not recover more than $ 100 million from a loan to build the project, leaving the province to fill the gap.
"The results are still mixed," Distasio said of the Winnipeg stadium. "I think the vast majority of people still appreciate that we have a beautiful new stadium, but this one has a price that we have not necessarily been prepared for."
He added, "Careful financial planning and monitoring is absolutely essential."
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