Good morning. This is Leadoff, the early buzz in Atlanta sports.
John Schuerholz and other Braves executives were in the room Tuesday morning when Collier County, Fla., commissioners unanimously rejected further negotiations with the team about building a new spring-training complex in the Naples area.
“We were invited to come down, so we did, as we’ve done for other communities where we have been discussing the possibility of partnering to build a complex,” Schuerholz told the AJC after returning to Atlanta later Tuesday. “When we visited with the individual commissioners, we had a sense that there was some wonderment in their minds about it. But we didn’t know that until we got down there.
“We learned there was not the positive momentum that you need to have a project like that go forward. So that’s that as far as Collier County is concerned.”
And the Braves’ two-year-old search for a new taxpayer-funded spring-training stadium continues, with no end in sight.
“It has been slow, and I don’t think any of us expected that,” Schuerholz said. “Of course, we had to wait for the elections. The commissions were reconstituted on election day. Collier County had three new commissioners elected, and actually (Tuesday’s) meeting was their first to meet as a commissioner.
“But it has been slow going — not because of anything we haven’t done or haven’t done properly. We’ve got people on the ground, mostly in Palm Beach County, and we had some contacts working on our behalf in Collier County as well. But it didn’t work out there.
“We’re still in communication — still grinding along — with Palm Beach County and also Sarasota County.”
Sarasota County commissioners voted in March to pursue negotiations with the Braves about a stadium in North Port. Those talks have been mostly under the radar since then, and Schuerholz said he doesn't know when the Sarasota County commissioners might consider the matter again.
The Braves originally wanted to move into a new spring-training home in 2018, after their 20-year lease at Disney’s ESPN Wide World of Sports complex expires next year. But the slow process led the team in June to push back their target date for a move to 2019. A lease extension has been agreed to, although not yet signed, to train at Disney in 2018, Schuerholz said Tuesday.
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Collier County's feasibility study indicated the Braves stadium project would cost as much as $101 million and would be funded largely with taxpayer dollars. At Tuesday's meeting, several commissioners said money should go toward beach restoration or roads instead of a stadium. They also raised questions about what the county would gain from a stadium deal, especially with spring training occurring during an already-busy tourist season.
“As much as I love sports tourism … in this particular situation we don’t need any tourists in February and March,” Commissioner Donna Fiala said. “We already have so much that we’re overloaded with it. And to try and add more is just going to complicate moving around the county even more than it is right now.
“Secondly, it says right here (in the feasibility study) the team almost always retains all revenue streams from facility operations. So that means we get to pay for the facility and they get to keep the revenue generated from it. That doesn’t hit me right.”
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