Melnyk’s Upbeat Bid

By Richard Starnes, The Ottawa Citizen

$100M vision
Sens owner wants to build soccer stadium near Scotiabank Place

OTTAWA – When you hear “a whole lot of screaming going on” and you are as inquisitive as Eugene Melnyk, you ask questions.

It happened one Saturday last year as the Ottawa Senators owner was driving past BMO Field in downtown Toronto.

“What’s that?” he asked his driver.

“That’s a Toronto FC game,” came the reply.

“How are they doing? Is this for real?”

“Sell out every game.”

Fast forward to tuesday morning at Ottawa’s Scotiabank Place and you find the same Eugene Melnyk telling a packed news conference that next month he will bid for a 2011 Major League Soccer franchise and would put it in a spanking new $100-million, 30,000-seat soccer-specific stadium.

What’s more, the stadium, earmarked for land southeast of Scotiabank Place that the city presently operates as a snow dump, could house another Ottawa franchise – the Canadian Football League.

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