Yesterday’s Citizen editorial notwithstanding, the document produced by City staff for the Corporate Services and Economic Development Committee isn’t all bad – at least not as far as baseball is concerned. (View the prospective Proposal criteria) It is true: Whoever takes over Lynx Stadium will be faced with prohibitively high operational costs, chiefly the utility bills. The dirty little secret on Coventry Road is that the $108,000 annual lease amount is dwarfed by the costs of actually running the Stadium (the latter, conservatively estimated at more than 3x the $108K).
But, I digress: Arguing the economics right now would be akin to a prisoner, having been granted a stay of execution, complaining about prison conditions. There will be time for that later.
The real “win” here for proponents of baseball is the provision that in order to be considered, a proposal must include a baseball component. Essentially, even Ikea could make a pitch but they’ll have to field a baseball team to get control of the property. The extension of the deadline proposed by the report (submissions are now required by February 2010) is another mixed blessing – getting a team up and running in three months will be a tall order, but it gives the Can-Am additional time to find owners for a team.
In my view, the early winners are Miles Wolff and the Can-Am. The requirement for baseball has ruled out the soccer proposal and the deadline extension has prevented the Ottawa Stadium Group from becoming the defacto winner of the competition- at least, for the time being. (Neate has a peremptory take down of the OSG here.)
