To succeed in entrepreneurship, you need: 

  • Vision
  • Ambition
  • Execution
  • Persistence
  • Luck 
  • Timing
  • Focus
  • Resiliency 

Vision vs vision: Vision (upper case V) is the “big idea,” the “Why.” Here, “making Montreal great again” (for lack of better term) via the return of baseball and the Expos, but also the largest civic development project since Expo ’67, 4C (“Foresee”): check out MontrealMojo.com for more.

That “Vision” (& in fairness: ambition, execution, persistence) has allowed this project – in 40 days, no less!! – to gain traction in:

– Funding: with enough large institutional funds focused on these projects, the Private Equity tranche is capped at 30% for the team in and in theory, up to 100% for the stadium, but no longer between “improbable and impossible,” but rather, “possible and likely.”

– Advisors aka sounding boards – progressing very well with titans of finance, governance etc. believing in the project.

I want to stress, that the paradox here is while you need a very motivated, driven and capable person to lead this initiative, one person alone cannot do anything when it comes to execution (without my team at WatchMojo, I would not be here). 

As part of 4C, I intend to house the Academy & Study of Entrepreneurship (ASE). If this were a classroom case study, I would emphasize that Vision without vision is a recipe to fail: vision (lower case) represents reading the room, understanding the landscape, analyzing the conditions to determine the steps, tactics to execute… and identifying the “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns” to reduce risks, costs, etc. which means figuring out your weaknesses and blind spots. For me, that includes real estate, which is why I have enlisted my brother-in-law John Voulieris, whose 25 years of experience helping Ericsson, Google, Morgan Stanley, Expedia et al. set up shop in Montreal helps me reduce risks and uncertainty… connecting me eventually with the right builders. 

“How can we be helpful?

Many fans have asked how they can help… and right now, with the wheels in motion to secure the PE tranche, I am focused on identifying the anchor investor – a HNWI or family office, ideally local but not necessarily if I am willing to be a minority owner and point-person the league works with, etc.

For me to confidently outline and project how an investor can maximize their investment, I need to focus on Marketing’s 4P:

Place, here, initially means where the Stadium shall be. But first, where it probably should not be:

My brother suggested “why not Jean Drapeau?” – in theory, that would create an incredible place where you can house a baseball stadium, the 4C campus, both enough i) parking to make Americans happy and ii) accessible public transit to make our previous mayor happy. You can also eventually build a soccer & football stadium for CF Montreal & the Alouettes, as well as an NBA-centric arena for a possible NBA team over a longer timeline, but, it would be a nightmare for many (especially Laval, West Island) and not really convenient for the corporate crowd – which is needed to generate the kinds of revenues needed for a successful franchise to afford the kinds of players to avoid Expos 2.0 being a farm system for other clubs (which will never happen on my watch, same way Montreal-based WatchMojo more than handled the competition from our global belligerents).

Royalmount (on/near the old Hippodrome) is an incredible achievement, Andrew Lutfy deserves a ton of credit for his Vision, Execution and Persistence to pull it off. In some ways, that area is nearly perfect wrt transit, transportation, parking, could house 4C and then some, but it seems unfair to South Shore residents and mainly, creates friction regarding demand and interest from Corporate clients. So, not ideal (but not ruled out).

Where the previous group had envisioned in Peel Bassin seems gone. That certainly remains an option if there’s enough land, and said land is available.

To me, ceteris paribus, the best spot to serve a) ALL Montrealers, b) the downtown corporate clientele and c) yes, to ensure the best ROI to investors, then ideally, you look at downtown. The original “Labatt Park” was just south of the Bell Centre, perfect, but that now houses condos. In theory, anywhere 

  • South of René Lévesque,
  • North of Lachine Canal (that creates a bit of a psychological barrier, but not unsurmountable),
  • East of Bonaventure,
  • West of Atwater, 

is ideal.

The Bonaventure area near la Cité du Multimedia is great, but unsure if there is enough space.

I also wonder if filling the port in Vieux-Montréal could work from an engineering and zoning space, giving a great backdrop to the park a la San Francisco, and using that general area to house 4C.

As I sat in traffic on the corner of Atwater and Ste-Catherine, I looked at the old Forum and Cabot Square and wondered if there was enough land, but, alas, no… and that would not really give the footprint required. But the point of this post is: vision – how we look at the problem to solve – needs to zoom out. One area the people can help is looking at the land equation differently – hence the image above. 

There are areas around the Costco on Bridge street that would check off many boxes, but unsure if there is a million square feet available.

In business, no idea is bad… as one idea leads to another, more practical solution. For example, as I was thinking of and looking at land around Costco, last night I had an epiphany: why not… the land where Costco sits right now?

Just for philosophical purposes,

  • presuming Costco owns the land and didn’t merely sign a long-term lease (which could work, as well), Americans are business people and if you make them an offer they can’t refuse, that gives you the approximate 1 Million square feet you need to pull off what we’re envisioning with a stadium and 4C campus housing everything else.
  • Everything else in 4C has expanded from “just museum pavilions” and the Academy & Study of Entrepreneurship to a stage and canvas to “import” the best in art, tech, and culture to Montreal: a pantheon showcasing the builders of the tools and tech we use now to communicate, create, consume content and experiences. While not intended to be shops but more museums to showcase the history of global innovation, a new, rebuilt (in a slightly different area near the existing Costco), this section could be adjacent to Costco, offering products to sell (latest gadgets and gizmos). It may seem clunky, but the idea when brainstorming is just to let new ideas flow, to solve problems.

If they pass, at least we tried before exploring other options.

Other Options?

Some 40 days in this adventure, it’s clear that capital is not the constraint… but I can see how land will be. So, fine people of Montréal, help me help you.

As residents ask me now can we help, I wonder: 

  • Are there no land owners who are sitting on “old” buildings, warehouses, etc. that are not necessarily “yielding” much value? This is not dissimilar to how empty parking lots and car washes sold to condo developers. But here, on a larger scale, and with greater purpose! It could be someone who has land / buildings sitting on 500K of square feet next to unused land that in aggregate could represent the land needed. 
  • So this is both a call to the wisdom of the crowd to crowdsource possible areas and an open offer to anyone who is sitting on land and open to cashing out to help the city and cash in on their investment and asset.

Seems like a long shot, but I have seen longer shots connect.

Let me know so I can update the document with the best ideas possible.

LFG!