Sale of Quebec City Capitales falls through, again

For the second time in recent weeks, the sale of the Quebec City Capitales baseball team has fallen through.

Current team manager, Michel Laplante, and two Quebec City businessmen, Jean Tremblay and Jean-Michel Picard, were prepared to pay $1 million for 75 per cent ownership of the 2009 Can-Am league champions.

The potential buyers, however, said Tuesday that the deal failed because they and the city couldn't agree on lease negotiations over the Victoria Park stadium.

The deal was based on the current cost of leasing the city-owned stadium for $40,000 per season.

City officials said it costsmore than$350,000 to maintain the stadium each year, and wanted the buyers to pay $280,000 in rent.

What the city was asking for was unreasonable, Laplante told CBC News.

"The players are making an average of $1,400 a month - not even $400 a week - every penny is counted, and to afford an extra $200,000 is absolutely impossible," he said.

Laplante also said the city won't allow for the installation of a new scoreboard and a synthetic turf, both of which he said will make the stadium more attractive to other sporting groups.

Current Capitales owner Miles Wolff said, deal or not, the team will suit up this spring.

But, he said, the failed negotiations put the long-term future of the Capitales at risk.

"I am disappointed. I thought this was a really great ownership group for the city of Quebec. They wanted a long-term lease, I thought it really would have stabilized professional baseball in Quebec for a long, long time, so obviously, it's a little bit discouraging," Wolff said.

The last failed attempt to purchase the Capitales was in mid-January between the city and Quebec City businessmen Picard and Jean-Sebastien Monette.

A Jan. 15 deal deadline was not met because of similar problems, including lease agreements and the city's not agreeing to the installation of a new scoreboard.

Quebec City councillor and member of the city's executive council Sylvain Lgar, was negotiating the most recent deal on behalf of the city.

Lgar told Radio-Canada Tuesday that Quebec City taxpayers are already subsidizing the team too much.

"In the negotiations that we held with the Capitales, what we wanted was a new approach. Instead of signing a yearly lease, we wanted to know if we could get a portion of ticket sales. That's an approach that we wanted to experiment with, but obviously that didn't work," he said.