Schooners Sports & Entertainment has "yet to deliver a promised business plan" for a stadium and an expansion CFL team to Halifax council representatives, but neither Atlantic Schooners Principal Owner Anthony LeBlanc nor CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie "view it as a death knell for the proposed franchise," according to Francis Campbell of the Halifax CHRONICLE-HERALD. LeBlanc said, "We continue to do our work in the background. The reality is these things take time to do them correctly and we really have one shot." LeBlanc had "hoped to provide the business plan to the municipality last December and then by Canada Day" on July 1. Ambrosie said, "We would rather take this amount of time to get the right outcome than to impose some kind of timetable that leaves us unsatisfied." Campbell noted "unanswered questions surround the construction of a stadium to house a team." SSE has proposed a C$130M stadium with 12,000 "permanent seats and a capability of adding 12,000 more temporary seats." LeBlanc said that the stadium would be "built on an undefined public-private partnership arrangement with Schooners Sports taking on the operational costs" (Halifax CHRONICLE-HERALD, 7/30). Ambrosie said he wants the Schooners franchise to "be here when they're ready to be here and they don't have to do that a day sooner." He added that while things "aren't moving as quick as everyone would like," the league is "fully committed to the management group" (GLOBALNEWS.ca, 7/31).
