Sarasota Moves Forward On Plan For New Braves Spring Home

If progress toward a new spring training home continues in Florida, SunTrust Park won’t be the only new stadium on the Braves’ horizon.

The team and Sarasota County agreed Tuesday on the particulars of a potential ballpark in Sarasota County at a cost of $75.4 million. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that the county commission voted 4-1 in favor of the agreement. The only holdover was county commissioner Paul Caragiulo, who raised concerns about how much access the public would have to the facilities when the Braves are away.

“I am very concerned with this project,” he told the Herald-Tribune. “I want to see it happen, big fan of the idea, I’m just still not comfortable enough to support this today going forward.”

The Braves currently play their spring training games at Champion Stadium, on the campus of Walt Disney World in Kissimmee, Fla.

If completed, the new stadium would seat 6,500 with an additional 1,500 standing room-only tickets. The current agreement stipulates that Sarasota County would have 20 days a year to host events at the stadium, but negotiations are ongoing. In addition to the main stadium, the facility would also house the Braves’ new minor league complex, which would include six more full fields and two half-fields. Seven hundred and fifty paved parking spaces would be created as well.

The deal would last 30 years and would require the Braves to pay between $2 million and $2.5 million toward stadium debt, an additional $5.625 million over the life of the contract for ballpark maintenance and would include two five-year extension options. Additionally, the term sheet requires that the Braves relocate their high Class A affiliate to the new park. The Braves’ high A club for 2017, the Florida Fire Frogs, will play at Osceola County Stadium in Kissimmee.

Sarasota would use proceeds from bond measures to contribute $21.3 million as well as $5.625 million over the life of the deal toward stadium maintenance.

The Herald-Tribune reported the deal must now be approved by the North Port City Commission and the West Villages Improvement District, and will consider the terms at meetings next week. Those parties need to agree before funds from Florida’s spring training retention fund—expected to be $20 million at $1 million per year—can be requested.

The potential move would add a fifth team to the cluster on the southern part of Florida’s west coast, which currently includes the Orioles in Sarasota, the Rays in Port Charlotte and the Red Sox and Twins in Fort Myers. It would further strand the Tigers in central Florida; the club just renovated and upgraded Joker Marchant Stadium in Lakeland, but one neighbor, the Astros, relocated this spring from Kissimmee to West Palm Beach. That would leave the Tigers tied in to the Tampa Bay cluster as well, about 90 minutes from Bradenton (Pirates), Clearwater (Phillies) and Dunedin (Blue Jays).

There’s a long way to go, but Tuesday’s agreement marked progress toward another change in the minor leagues’ ever-shifting landscape.