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A Wrigley-Field style ballpark near the old Montreal Forum? The door is open
The biggest obstacles to Major League baseball returning to Montreal remain. Those include not-insignificant details like:
1) an actual franchise prepared to relocate.
2) hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars to buy that franchise AND build a ballpark.
But on Monday, a ray of hope appeared for those longing to hear the crack of the bat once more.
The old Montreal Children's Hospital, a booming home run's distance away from the old Montreal Forum on the western edge of downtown, has been sold to 38-year-old developer Luc Poirier.
And in an interview with the CBC Monday, the entrepreneur said he's open to the possibility of a stadium.
"I have a meeting scheduled in the next week with one of the biggest major league baseball persons," Poirier told the CBC. "I have only one (person), but a big one. A big, big one."
Poirier added that other possibilities for the land include condos, but that his thinking was that the buildings likely would be demolished regardless of the deployment of the land because the infrastructure of the older buildings was unsuitable for the demands of today's condo buyers (higher ceilings, more and bigger windows).
The site's dimensions are 190 metres by 220 metres, which translates to about 10.3 acres. Poirier drew the comparison to Fenway Park in the CBC interview which according to legendary Boston baseball scribe Peter Gammons, is about nine acres (7.5 acres of which is used for the assymetrical playing field).
Wrigley Field in Chicago sits on approximately 8.8 acres; Target Field in Minneapolis sits on approximately 8.5 acres (the smallest in the majors), Camden Yards in Baltimore on about 11 acres and AT&T Park in San Francisco on just over 13 acres.
Right next to it, though, is Cabot Square (known to locals as Pigeon Park), a fairly large public square which the city just re-opened this summer after spending more than $6 million on refurbishment.
Until now, most of the potential – let's underline that word – ballpark site ideas were in Griffintown, which is south of downtown. Two years ago, this idea came up - on a site that is just over seven acres. That's virtually unworkable for a major-league park.
It will be an interesting plotline to follow, especially if the name of the "big, big person" is revealed in the wake of the meeting.
It has been more than a year since reports surfaced that several Montreal businessmen, including Stephen Bronfman of the Bronfman family, were interested in teaming up with Bell (which, presumably, would be open to adding 162 games' worth of content for its various TSN channels) to bring baseball back to Montreal.
Since then, crickets – pretty much.
Half-a-billion dollars for a ballpark, not to mention whatever the cost would be to purchase a franchise and relocate it, and the fact that the Canadian dollar isn't nearly what it was a few years ago compared to the US dollar, skyrocketing payrolls ...
Putting all that aside, any talk of a potential stadium location is good talk.
