Owners Want New Skydome Lease

The owners of the Toronto Blue Jays, trying to get a better lease at the SkyDome, threatened Friday to move back to Exhibition Stadium next season.

The Blue Jays lease at SkyDome expires Nov. 30. Interbrew SA, the Dutch brewery that owns team, also owns 49 percent of SkyDome shares, but wants a new deal with its other partners -- Penfund, Controlled Media Communications and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce -- before signing a new five-year lease.

"It is not an idle ... threat," Allan Chapin, a director of Interbrew, said Friday. "We're assuming that SkyDome will realize the business reality of the sport world."

When asked what the owners would do with lost revenue from SkyDome corporate boxes (there aren't any at Exhibition Stadium), Chapin would only say: "We'll look at the alternatives."

Toronto played in Exhibition Stadium, an open-air stadium built for football, from its inception in 1977 until moving to SkyDome, which has a retractable dome, in June 1989.

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