Schooners Sports and Entertainment is a sports ownership group currently in negotiations with the Canadian Football League for an expansion team that is expected to begin play sometime in the 2020s as the Atlantic Schooners. Should the team take the field, it may begin playing in Moncton, New Brunswick, before moving into a new stadium in the Dartmouth community of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The team has the same name as a conditional CFL franchise that was granted by the league in 1982 only to fold the following year without playing a game. As with the original Schooners franchise, the most significant impediment to the current application is believed to be the ability to secure funding for a new stadium.
History
2017
In November, the CFL conducted discussions with a group in Halifax interested in securing a franchise for the city; the group made a "very credible" pitch to the CFL head office. According to TSN analyst Dave Naylor the group consists of Anthony LeBlanc, Bruce Bowser and Gary Drummond.
2018
In June, the ownership group, which was then named Maritime Football Ltd., met with Premier of New BrunswickBrian Gallant and Moncton mayor Dawn Arnold, to discuss the possibility of a Halifax team playing some games in Moncton. Later that month, the group met with the Halifax Regional Council in private about plans to bring a CFL team to Halifax, with the possibility of playing at Université de Moncton while a stadium in Halifax is being built. The possible stadium locations were narrowed down to two sites, in Dartmouth Crossing and Bayers Lake Business Park. It was then revealed that the Maritime Football Ltd. ownership group preferred the Shannon Park location in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia to develop a new stadium. The stadium was estimated to cost between $170 and $190 million and would seat 24,000 and have a business model similar to the Ottawa Redblacks, who entered the league in 2014. On October 30, Halifax City Council unanimously voted in favour of proceeding with a business case analysis of a stadium in the Halifax municipality. Following this positive momentum, Maritime Football Ltd. and CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie announced that the group would proceed with a season ticket drive to further gauge interest in addition to running a team name contest in the hopes of making an announcement on the team name just prior to the 106th Grey Cup game. The target year for the proposed team to enter the league would be 2021, with the team name including the word "Atlantic", but no franchise was actually awarded in this announcement. Further to the previous discussions with Moncton and New Brunswick politicians, it was also suggested that the potential new franchise could begin play at Croix-Bleue Medavie Stadium in Moncton, which has previously hosted CFL matches, while the stadium in Halifax is built. On November 23, two days before the 106th Grey Cup, Maritime Football Ltd. and commissioner Ambrosie announced the new team would be called the 'Atlantic Schooners,' the same name adopted by the ill-fated conditional franchise of the early 1980s that folded without playing a game. At that time the Maritime Football Ltd. partnership changed their name to Schooners Sports and Entertainment. By December 21, the SSE had sold over 6,000 season ticket deposits.
2019
In early February, it was revealed the proposed stadium budget of $180 million had been scaled back to $130 million, reducing the extravagance of the design to a simple stadium which could be improved in future renovations. In late September 2019 the SSE and the Halifax Regional Municipality revealed the final plans for the stadium, with a price tag of $94 million plus the purchasing of the land valued at $10 million. The stadium will include 24,000 seats, half of which are permanent. The planned completion date for construction is June 1, 2022. On October 22, the Halifax council voted 9–8 in favour of proceeding with the HRM staff preparing a review of the stadium proposal. Additionally, the timeline to deliver the report was accelerated from the spring of 2020 to December 2019. On December 6, the staff of the HRM recommended the rejection of the proposed Shannon Park location in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, citing a lack of transportation infrastructure. The report did however, recommend offering a one-time payment of $20 million once a potential stadium at a different location is near completion. On December 10, the Halifax Regional Council voted 10–7 in favour of approving $20 million in conditional funding for the stadium elsewhere in the city.
