But a solution could also be sitting next door, where another large vacant industrial site is being eyed as a potential home for a new West Harbour sports complex.
Harbour chairman Lance Spence told the Otago Daily Times the Dunedin City Council had agreed to find an alternative ground for the club to use, if necessary, during a meeting late last month.
Logan Park offered one option, but another was the now-vacant industrial site at 160 Ravensbourne Rd, just northeast of Moller Park, he said.
A development at the vacant site could include a new sports field and clubrooms, a cafe and public toilets, servicing cyclists and other users of the nearby State Highway 88 shared pathway as well.
The club would expect any development to be paid for by other parties as a "compromise" which could deliver "an ideal scenario" for the community, Mr Spence said.
Both Moller Park and the neighbouring site were owned by the Ravensdown fertiliser company, and a company spokesman would only say it was willing to discuss "plenty of things" with the club.
DCC city services general manager Sandy Graham said the council could offer the club the use of Logan Park, if needed, but there were no plans to investigate a development of 160 Ravensbourne Rd.
The ODT reported in April that Harbour feared being forced off Moller Park by Ravensdown, despite the field being used for rugby for 134 years.
Ravensdown had cited health and safety concerns while pushing the club to sign a one-year lease, which the club saw as a pretext to remove it and develop the site.
The club was preparing for a legal fight, but in the meantime has also been studying records dating back to the Otago Harbour Board's reclamation of the area between 1880 and 1910.
A researcher for the club has obtained documents detailing the ownership history of Moller Park, beginning with the harbour board, which leased the park to the Dominion Fertiliser Company from the 1920s.
Ownership later transferred to Port Otago and its subsidiary Chalmers Properties Ltd, which then leased it to Ravensdown, beginning in the 1980s.
But the documents also showed the site had been sold to Ravensdown in 2000 in a deal financed by Chalmers Properties, which held a mortgage over the site until 2007.
The club could find no record of the sale being advertised publicly, and neither the Harbour rugby club nor the community appeared to have been advised.
But harbour board records also showed it had repeatedly pushed the DCC to accept a rezoning of Moller Park, from a recreational site to an industrial one, during the 1960s.
The harbour board had to set aside land for community use as a condition of its wider reclamation in the area.
Its subsequent push to rezone Moller Park included offering the DCC the gift of a "triangle" of land in Anzac Ave, if the council withdrew its opposition, the records showed.
No record of the final decision to rezone Moller Park had yet been found, but council records had since began listing it as an industrial site.
Ms Graham would only say any decisions from that period were "well before" local authority amalgamation in 1989 formed the current DCC.
Port Otago chief executive Kevin Winders could not comment yesterday on events dating back decades, while a Ravensdown spokesman also declined to comment on the purchase of Moller Park.
It also "wouldn't be right" to comment on events which pre-dated Ravensdown's formation in 1977, he added.
"But again, we want to reiterate we have no present plans for Moller Park for industrial development."
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Comments
Why wouldn't it be right to talk about events predating Ravensdown? They took over the old Dominion Fertiliser business via Kempthorne Prosser. That's like saying the ANZ shouldn't have to talk about anything the National Bank did. And what's with the
attempted hand-washing with reference to 1989 local authority amalgamation? People shouldn't try to weasel out of their proper obligations in this way.