NHL’s Ottawa Senators eye new City home

Image: Scotiabank Place, Janothird, CC BY-SA 3.0

Canada’s Ottawa Senators are in line for a new home after reaching an agreement with the National Capital Commission (NCC) on a downtown development that will include an NHL arena.

Link2build said the Senators, under new owner Michael Andlauer, had entered a memorandum of understanding with the NCC in June 2022 to develop the downtown LeBreton Flats area.

With an agreement in principle in place after a deadline passed last week, the way is paved for the Senators to relocate from their current suburban home in Kanata at the Canadian Tire Centre to a more central location.

The Ottawa Senators, officially the Ottawa Senators Hockey Club and colloquially known as the Sens, are a professional ice hockey team based in Ottawa (Canada).

They compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division in the Eastern Conference and play their home games at the 18,652-seat Canadian Tire Centre which opened in 1996 as the Palladium.

The 18,652-capacity Canadian Tire Centre is a multipurpose arena in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, located in the Western suburb of Kanata. It opened in January 1996 as the Palladium and was also known as the Corel Centre from 1996 to 2006 and Scotiabank Place from 2006 to 2013.

The Senators and the NCC have gone through this process previously, only to see a deal fall through in 2019.

At a press conference, NCC chief executive officer Tobi Nussbaum and Senators president and CEO Cyril Leeder both said there were reasons to be optimistic that this time would be different.

Leeder said, “I think it’s different for a whole bunch of reasons, most notably we’re in a position now where everybody wants this to happen. So, the team wants it to happen, Tobi and his team want this to happen, the community wants it to happen.

“We really are at a point where having an arena downtown is going to be great for the Senators.”

Specific designs for a new arena have not been finalized, and construction work is not expected to start any time soon.

Both Nussbaum and Leeder cautioned the project is still in very early stages, with many studies and approvals needed before construction can begin.

The agreement includes the sale of 10 acres of land at LeBreton Flats to the Senators at what Nussbaum called “fair market value,” a price that has yet to be determined. This is an increase and a change from the original plan for a long-term lease of six acres.

Leeder said, “It’s already a very difficult, complex process, layering in doing it on leased land makes it even more complex.

“So, we really felt that in order for us to do all this work we’re talking about going forward, make this effort to get this done, I really needed to have a site that we owned and give us the reduced amount of complexity in an already a complex process.”

Link2build further stated that the arena is just one part of a broader vision for LeBreton Flats, which will eventually include over 6,000 housing units with a target of 25% as affordable housing, as well as parks and public spaces.

The development is expected to have a substantial impact on downtown Ottawa, drawing more people into the core for both hockey games and other major events.

A previous deal to redevelop LeBreton Flats and build an arena under former owner Eugene Melnyk collapsed in 2019 following a fallout between Melnyk and business partner John Ruddy.

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