Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Winter Heat, Spring Negotiations
Study: Braves spring baseball stadium could cost Collier County $101 million
GREG STANLEY / NAPLES DAILY NEWS (DEC 8)
Collier County could build the Atlanta Braves a spring training stadium here by the end of 2018, a new study from the county shows.
The question is: Does it want to?
Commissioners will decide Tuesday whether to push forward negotiations with the Braves, who have been threatening to leave their site in Orlando for more than a year and are flirting with at least two other Florida counties for a new stadium.
It could cost the county $101 million to build a stadium, buy the land and set up a parking lot, according the county’s feasibility study.
To pay for it, the county would have to borrow the money and raise its tourist tax, from 4 percent to 5 percent, to help pay down that debt.
The county estimated the stadium would pump about $25 million a year into the economy, through hotel stays, restaurants, sales tax and short-term rentals from fans who would travel here for spring training, County Manager Leo Ochs said.
That number comes from reviewing economic impact studies in Lee County, which hosts the Boston Red Sox and Minnesota Twins, and Palm Beach County, home to the St. Louis Cardinals, Miami Marlins and, next year, the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals.
“We visited with the Lee County team, and we talked to Palm Beach County, along with our bond council and financial advisers, to look at these studies,” Ochs said. “They all seem to fall in around that $25 million per stadium in annual spending.”
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It would take a simple majority, three of the five commissioners to move negotiations forward. But the project eventually would need the support of a super-majority, four of the five, to change the zoning of the site and raise the tourist tax.
Collier County to reconsider negotiations with Atlanta Braves
ZACH MURDOCK / SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE (DEC 9)
SARASOTA – Collier County will reconsider next week whether to pursue negotiations with the Atlanta Braves for a new baseball spring training complex.
Although the Collier County Commission shot down an initial proposal with the team this year, county and team officials met in June and the county began a feasibility study for such a complex soon after.
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Collier County Manager Leo Ochs will present the results of that study to the commission on Tuesday.
The study concludes a spring training complex likely would cost just over $100 million and that the City Gate development, at Collier Boulevard and Interstate 75 on the east side of Naples, is the only appropriate site there “in the urban area near adequate highway transportation and away from residential enclaves.”
The site in Naples would be near the Boston Red Sox spring home in Lee County.
City Gate is just a few minutes north of the site of a private group’s proposal to the Braves that all five County Commissioners rejected in April. Since then, though, three new commissioners have been elected to the board and will consider negotiating with the Braves.
“It’s unfortunate that this has to come to a new board so early, but we’re really working off the Braves’ schedule,” Ochs told the Naples Daily News this week.
To date the Sarasota County Commission remains the only government to formally authorize negotiations with the team.
Sarasota County and West Villages developers have proposed a $100 million complex to anchor a new town center on 100 to 150 acres in the heart of the planned West Villages commercial district along the south side of U.S. 41 and west of River Road. It would also put the Braves close to the Baltimore Orioles’ spring training home in downtown Sarasota.
Next: A Brief History of MLB Payrolls and the Braves
[ Ed. Note: Based on what I’m seeing, if probably down to Sarasota and Collier counties for a new Braves Spring site… and frankly, Sarasota county has the lead in this race.
That county is the only one that has a dialog currently in place with the Braves. While Collier has done the aforementioned economic feasibility study, Sarasota is several months further down that road… and right now, “several months” means a lot. ]