The owners of two Major League Baseball teams hoping to build a multi-million-dollar spring-training complex in West Palm Beach heard from the community on Thursday.
“This is our chance to voice, strongly voice, our concerns about what we want in our community, because we’re always left on the back burner,” resident Antonio Scott said during a meeting at Crossroads Baptist Church at Haverhill Road and 45th Street.
The Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are hoping to build a spring-training and year-round sports center on a 160-acre city-owned site, according to the Palm Beach Post.
The teams argue the stadium project will contribute $120 million a year to the local economy.
However, the teams are competing with an unnamed private developer who might buy the site for $14 million and build townhouses, commercial uses and a public park.
“Let the city commissioners decide if this is something good for the people in this neighborhood, the people in this city,” Giles Kibbe, general counsel for the Astros, told Thursday’s gathering. “We think it’s much better than any other offer they might have.” [Palm Beach Post] – Christopher Cameron