Is there any new news on Ottawa expansion?

Brendan - Hey man thanks for responding! I very much apprecieate the response and rest assured, unless someone plunks down more up to date info you will probably walk away wih best answer.

As I understand it the crack in the foundation is what required the demolition of part of Frank Clair. As I understand it, nothing that remains is dangerous, but the stadium is now about 26K capacity and unbalanced looking. Has anyone been on site since the demolition? What would it take to get that place surviavable? WOuld they have to permanently rebuild the lower deck, or could that be replaced with much cheaper bleachers/ temporary seating until money could be raised to do it properly?

Can anyone comment on the issues the stadium has that legitimately NEED to be fixed? It seems like if Montreal can survive in a 20K stadium, in terms of capacity the stadium is OK... What specifically is falling apart out there? Can any Ottawa residents give feedback on how far the city will go?

Regarding other sites, what I do know is that the CFL leadership through the various incarnations has wanted to put a team in NS or NB. The desire was Halifax because it was considered the "safest" place as it is the largest city in the region. It has 407K people in the Halifax Metro area (larger than CFL city regina metro 201k and smaller than Hamilton Metro 692K). For the most part your tickets are sold in your metro area. Nova Scotia (pop. 935K) seems to have enough population to deliver decent merchandise sales (Saskatchewan has just over 1M, Manitoba has just under 1.2M).

While Winnepeg, Saskatchewan, and Hamilton have had financial issues at times in the past, they have maintained teams long term.

Halifax's hurdles appear to be stadium and ownership issues. The CFL thinks they need 25K capacity stadiums for viability. Montreal has done it with 20K, but they sell out every game. Huskies Stadium seats 9K, but was expanded to 11K, which it sold out

for "Touchdown Atlantic" (2K temporary seats). The CFL was clearly hoping that they could play up there and help sway community opinion to build a new stadium for a CFL team and the 2014 Commonwealth Games. (Halifax withdrew its bid for the games in early March 2007). That would have been an ideal situation in their opinion, allowing a single trip to that region and allowing residents of NS, PEI, and Northeastern NB (and possibly even Newfoundland) to support the Halifax team through merchandising. Clearly that would probably be viable, even though the travel costs passed on to the league would be brutal. The thought (wrongly IMO) was that a single team in Halifax would deliver enough CFL merchandising support to offset the dramatic increase in travel costs.

Concerning ownership, Is there a valid ownership group? Would the CFL let in another community owned team in today's big money CFL?

It should be noted that there is a facebook group working to get a team admitted for Halifax. They should keep working hard. A smaller facebook group for UNT was able to leverage their group into sufficient support to win an election to finance a new stadium. Financially, Halifax is what the league wants. You guys probably just have to get the stadium built.

Moncton is an interesting situation and one I admire a lot. Basically uppity little city Moncton (metro population = 126K) realized that Halifax was blowing it and decided to jump ahead of them and land the CFL's much desired Atlantic franchise by building a CFL ready stadium.

The stadium would reportedly be built to serve the University de Moncton and 2010 IAAF World Junior Championships (and hopefully the Atlantic Schooners). It is scheduled to be completed by 2010.

Sadly somewhere along the lines the plan lost a wheel. What started as a plan to build a stadium with 20K permanent seating is now a plan to buld a stadium with 8,500 seats that could be expanded to 18,500 with temporary seating.

This hits me as a horrible idea. If Moncton had built a 20,000 seat stadium that could be expanded to 25,000 with temp seating, they would probably have been awarded a CFL franchise.

Building a stadium that tops out at 18K will likely get the CFL out there playing exhibition games

but Moncton might find themselves being played by the CFL to spur Halifax to build a stadium rather than risk "losing out to Moncton".

I would strongly encourage Moncton CFL advocates to push their city now to increase the number of permanent seats in the stadium NOW, while all revenue streams are available and potentially adjustable. Once New moncton Stadium is built, Canadians world reknown resistance to upgrading stadiums will likely come into play and NMS will be exclusively a CIS stadium, albeit a very good one.

Althought Moncton metro is tiny --- even smaller than Regina, it is near to PEI (138K) and not far really from Halifax. It SHOULD be able to fill a CFL stadium with some regularity. New Brunswick (751K) and PEI (129K) equate to a population of 880K to buy merchandising. Again it could be viable.

IMO If they built a proper 20K stadium, they would land a CFL team and in short order you might see Halifax build one as well. I could see Quebec and Halifax as 11&12.

I have to think that Quebec (the City) has to be the CFL's backup plan for a 10th team if Ottawa comes through and the Atlantic expansion remains unviable. WIth a 18.5K permanent seat stadium, strong support for football in the community, a metro population of 715K, and a regional population of 1.068M (=Capitale-Nationale population + neighboring Chaudière-Appalaches region population), it seems like all the pieces are there. (The stadium does need some expansion/improvements.)

I like London too (even though their metro population of = 457K is small, they would get travelling fans from Toronto & Hamilton in games vs. those teams; addtionally there are a lot of smaller communities in the region to buy merchandise), but I don't know if they could permanently expand TD Waterhouse to 20-25K or if community support would be there to build a new stadium.

Same with the Waterloo/Kitchener/Guelph/Cambridge area (580K). (Kitchener would be a good site for a stadium, IMO.) Victoria/Vancouver Island looks like a good expansion site too.

Windsor makes a ton of sense as it would bring in the Detroit TV market. Detroit's population is 1/5 the size of all of Canada. The Mayor of Windsor seemed very gung ho to expand U Windsor's stadium to 20K a few years ago to bring in the CFL, but was apparently discouraged after meeting with the CFL commisioner. They spent the money on something else. It is unclear whether the CFL still has an in in Windsor with the Mayor.

I think there are strong arguements that the CFL has struggled in Ontario (pop. 12M), British Columbia (pop. 4.5M), and Quebec (pop. 8M) because of too few franchises in those provinces. 2 Ontario teams, 1 in BC, and 1 in Quebec combined with no teams in NB/PEI, NL, or NS is probably why merchandise sales and TV viewership for the CFL is always in the toilet. Insufficient brand penetration. I doubt there is anything inherently better (in terms of CFL support/potential) in the rest of western Canada, but the CFL is much more popular there. I think the DFL is considered an odditiy outside of western Canada. The question to me is will the CFL owners take the steps to make smart CFL expansion viable?

Anyway...This was a long rant, and I apologize. I am still looking to find out any new news on the Ottawa situation.