The Braves won’t have a new spring-training home as soon as they had hoped.
After aiming for two years to have a new facility built and open in Florida by spring 2018, the Braves have conceded that won’t happen and have pushed back their timetable, team executives told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“We’re now focusing on 2019,” Braves vice chairman John Schuerholz said. “It’s moving slowly enough that we have to adjust, and our target for a new facility is 2019.”
The Braves’ lease at Disney’s Wide World of Sports near Orlando, where the team has trained since 1998, expires after next spring. But recent talks with officials in Palm Beach County and Sarasota County haven’t progressed fast enough to keep the timetable on track for a 2018 move. So the Braves have had a “substantive conversation” with Disney officials, Schuerholz said, about the possibility of a one-year extension that would keep the team training there in 2018.
“We feel like there’s a real reasonable chance — we’re hopeful — we can do something with Disney to extend for another spring,” Schuerholz said.
