Montreal will not be promoting the return of baseball.

The City of Montreal will not commit public funds for the return of professional baseball to Montreal, Mayor Valerie Plante confirmed Tuesday morning, just hours after meeting with businessman Stephen Bronfman and Claridge’s president and CEO. Pierre Boivin at Town Hall.

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Ms Plant described this discussion with the Montreal Baseball Group, the first since the start of the pandemic, as “helpful”, as she was authorized to update the file managed by the initiators of the project. However, she wished to remind her peers of some caveats.

“Baseball back in Montreal is a good idea, but Montreal will not be the promoter. We already played in that movie and we saw what it was like,” Ms. Blunt recalls in the press.

Saying she considered the project interesting, she also asked Baseball Montreal Group to do a public update of the project in order to answer many of the questions that remain unanswered. According to her, this is the next step to take. “It’s their project, they want to bring it up while they’re doing it,” she said.

baseball group […] He must talk to the audience about his project and vision and answer questions, because there are a lot of them and they are legit. It’s up to the baseball group to move forward.”

The mayor also specified that “in the coming months, several elements will collapse.” His management intends to present his vision for the development of the sector Bronfman is targeting, the Peel Basin sector. Everything will follow the report from the Office of Public Consulting in Montreal (OCPM). Just before the pandemic began, in March 2020, he preferred not to comment on the construction of the stadium. In addition, the head of the OCPM at the time, Dominique Olivier, is today the head of the city’s executive committee.

“Montrealans clearly told us, during the last election campaign among others, that the priorities are housing and environmental transformation. Yes, there is an economic recovery, but we should be able to justify it and in this case, that’s what I reiterated: there will be no money from Montrealans in project,” she insisted.

– in collaboration with Félix Lacerte-Gauthier