The future remains uncertain for the former home of the Triple-A Ottawa Lynx and Can-Am’s Ottawa Rapidz. City of Ottawa staff have recommended that the park be used for baseball in the short-term. Read more here. Now, from a business perspective, one immediate concern for any baseball suitor should be the length of the lease and the uncertainty surrounding the ballpark’s future. Indeed, the inability to secure a long-term lease commitment or option would present substantial, inherent risk for any new franchise owner. That said, there are apparently two groups still interested in bringing baseball back to Ottawa.
Based on comments by Miles Wolff, commissioner for the Can-Am League, we understood that the Can-Am had decided to abandon efforts to pursue Ottawa, but interest appears to remain. (Maybe we mistranslated the reporting in French, or maybe it was just posturing by Wolff.) More intriguing, however, is the interest by local businessman David Butler, who would now like to bring in a franchise from the California-based Golden Baseball League. (Back in August, Butler and his Ottawa Stadium Group were pursuing a Can-Am League franchise.) Before we learned which league Butler’s group was currently representing, we speculated that it might be the Golden.
