Details about the future of the Ottawa Senators and LeBreton Flats will become more clear later this month, according to CEO and president Cyril Leeder.
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Details about the future of the Ottawa Senators and LeBreton Flats will become more clear later this month, according to CEO and president Cyril Leeder.
Sept. 20 is the deadline to firm up details for a new memorandum of understanding between the NHL hockey club and the National Capital Commission. With just three weeks left to come to an agreement, Leeder said Wednesday that talks are intensifying and he’s hopeful that a deal would come through.
“We’re still talking with the NCC,” Leeder told OBJ, following the Senators’ season launch event at the Canadian Tire Centre. “We’re still trying to find some common ground … It’s our expectation that (by Sept. 20), we’ll know whether we’ll be able to come to terms with the NCC on the future of an arena on LeBreton Flats. That’s what the agreement says at this point. That’s what we’ve been working towards, is trying to finalize terms that would work for them and for us.”
With the second-oldest arena in the National Hockey League, the Senators have been considering their options in recent years, weighing whether to keep their suburban location by renovating the 30-year-old CTC, or take a leap and build a brand-new arena close to Ottawa’s downtown core.
Earlier this year, Leeder said the seven-acre parcel just 10 minutes west of downtown was the only location the Senators were seriously considering. He said Wednesday that remains true, though the organization is ready to switch gears if needed.
“I mean, we’ve kind of committed that we want to see this through,” he said. “If we can get a deal done, we will. If we can’t, we’ll move on to other options, but we really haven’t looked at anything seriously other than that.”
A new arena would be a similar size or slightly smaller than the Senators’ current home, aiming for a capacity of between 16,000 to 17,000 people. It would also include newer amenities and improved loading zones, with the hopes of doubling the number of shows the facility can host.
While budgets and timelines are nowhere near confirmed, Leeder said the closest comparison would be the Calgary Flames new 18,000-seat arena, which is set to open in 2025. In April, Leeder said building a new 800,000-square-foot arena would cost around $1.2 billion-$1.5 billion. Surrounding infrastructure, like hotels, condos, restaurants, bars and office buildings, are expected to cost three to five times that amount.
While remaining in Kanata is always an option, Leeder said the team is firm in its desire to build new elsewhere.
“We’ve got a building that’s got decent bones to it,” he said. “It is on the older side, so we would need a fairly significant renovation, so that is an option. But it’s not one we’re considering at this point, I should be clear on that. I think there’s a lot of reasons the downtown could really use a boost and I think that the arena and the team and all the events that it brings could help with that. We’d like to be more central to our fan base over the next 50 years. Kanata has been a good location for us, but if we were downtown with a new LRT system, we think that’s probably the right place to be.”
In April, NCC CEO Tobi Nussbaum said talks were continuing with the Senators and he was optimistic a deal could be reached to move the team to LeBreton Flats. Nussbaum also suggested that the NCC had a backup plan for the site in case a deal is not reached with the Senators.
In January, the NCC agreed to extend its memorandum of understanding with the Senators to the fall of 2024 to give the two sides more time to negotiate. The MOU was originally slated to expire last fall.
Following previous owner Eugene Melynk’s death nearly two years ago, the Senators were granted preferred-bidder status in June 2022 to negotiate with the NCC on a plan to build an events centre that would be the crown jewel of the Crown corporation’s long-term effort to redevelop the Flats.
While talks have progressed, the process slowed while the Senators sought new ownership. Toronto businessman Michael Andlauer assumed control of the team last September and has been considering his next steps for a new arena.
Andlauer has said he believes that relocating the team closer to the city’s core is the right move, but hasn’t explicitly named a preferred site.
After taking over ownership in September, Andlauer described LeBreton as “maybe the best piece of land in the inner city probably in North America available for development.”
Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe and other members of the business community have suggested that LeBreton is not the only viable option for a downtown rink, noting that the federal government’s plan to offload aging downtown office towers could open up new pockets of land for development in the core.
With files from David Sali
