The group that's looking to bring Major League Baseball back to Montreal appears to have settled on a potential site for a new downtown ballpark.
The long talked-about Peel Basin site in Pointe St. Charles, which is now owned by a federal Crown corporation, Canada Lands Company, is the Montreal Group's first choice — and, according to La Presse and radio station 98.5 FM, the group is calling on the Legault government to go to bat for it, in an effort to convince the feds to set the land aside for them.
The reports suggest that Stephen Bronfman, who heads up the Montreal Group, and Pierre Boivin, the head of Bronfman's investment group Claridge, recently added their names to Quebec's lobbyists' registry.
For now, neither man is commenting on the reports.
For the moment, the proposed location is a 20-minute walk from either the Bonaventure of Charlevoix metro stations, but would be close to a station on the soon-to-be-built REM network.
Mayor Valerie Plante has indicated she'll take a careful look at any proposals the group puts forward. At City Hall on Wednesday, she called the Peel Basin proposal "interesting", and hinted that any new stadium project would have to take the needs of the surrounding neighborhood into account.