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Palm Beach County taking a swing at bringing back Atlanta Braves for spring training
Palm Beach County’s vice mayor wants to take a swing at luring the Atlanta Braves back to South Florida for spring training.
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Vice Mayor Hal Valeche said he met with Braves officials earlier this week, and he’d like the County Commission to vote April 5 to begin efforts to entice the team in time for the 2018 season.
“They expressed a very strong interest in being here,” he said. “For us to be competitive, we can’t delay very much. We need to get this done.”
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The Braves trained in Palm Beach County from 1962 until 1997, when the team moved to Disney’s Wide World of Sports in Orlando.
The club’s lease is expiring in Orlando, and John Prince Park — west of Lake Worth — has emerged as a possible site for a ballpark in Palm Beach County, Valeche said.
The Braves have been looking at other locations in Florida. The Sarasota County Commission voted unanimously March 8 to negotiate with the Braves.
The club approached Sarasota County officials about a year ago to discuss locating there, said Jeff Maultsby, Sarasota County’s director of business and economic development.
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“We’ve indicated to the club that we would not engage in a bidding war,” Maultsby said. “There’s no level of concern on our behalf in that regard.”
The team also contacted Collier and Pinellas counties, Maultsby said.
A Braves spokesman could not be reached for comment Friday, despite phone calls. The team has hired two lobbyists to work in Palm Beach County, according to county records.
One key question will be how to pay for a new stadium, which could cost more than $100 million, Valeche said.
“It’s difficult,” Valeche said. “Just because it’s difficult doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look at every avenue. We could really become a serious hub for spring training.”
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This past year, the commission approved a $135 million spring training baseball stadium for the intersection of 45th Street and Haverhill Road in West Palm Beach.
The Houston Astros and Washington Nationals plan to make the stadium their spring training home next year. The county paid about half of the ballpark’s price tag with the teams and the state pitching in the rest.
Ed. Note: – and here I thought that the team’s foray towards Palm Beach was looking more like an act of desperation. Well, stranger things have happened.
Supposing this were to occur, that would put the Braves, Nationals, Astros, Marlins, and Cardinals all within shouting distance (or a driver and 3-Wood, if you prefer) of each other on Florida’s Gold Coast, with the Mets just a bit further up the road (I-95) in Port St. Lucie.
Yes, this would put 4 of the 5 NL East teams all in the same, tight geographic region for Spring Training. Not real sure why the Braves would want that, but … whatever.
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That said, the Gulf Coast of Florida is clearly not out of the running, and there’s a lot of negotiations still to take place, so stay tuned.