Wednesday, May 14, 2014

John Prince Park off the list of possible Spring Training sites

Comment Up

State Representative Lori Berman called me this morning to let me know that John Prince Park is out of the picture for a Spring training facility. The City of Lake Worth and its commissioners were working over-time to ruin a county park and collapse a neighborhood in Maxwell's district.

The reason why Scott Maxwell was in such a lousy mood last night:

From: Robert Weisman
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 1:17 PM
To: BCC-All Commissioners
Cc: Verdenia Baker; Jon Van Arnam; Eric Call; Liz Bloeser; Sherry Brown; Audrey Wolf; JGreen@wpb.org; croog@wpb.org; Robert Weisman
Subject: Baseball Spring Training

A meeting was held today with representatives of the teams, the City of West Palm Beach and County staff to discuss costs, funding and site issues.  The exclusive site discussed was the West Palm Beach 160 acre site south of 45th Street between Haverhill Road and Military Trail.  The teams indicated that the County’s alternative John Prince site is too small for the two team facility that they currently envision.

The meeting was not conclusive, but there was open discussion in an amicable manner.  It was agreed that a follow up meeting would be scheduled in the near future after the parties have the opportunity to better analyze open issues which include construction costs, maintenance responsibilities, availability of tourist development funding and the ability to bond such revenues and State  funds, and how the property might be used to benefit City and County residents when not in use by the teams.  If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to call me.

Read Joe Capozzi's article that says, John Prince Park off the table

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The John Prince Park site was totally ridiculous . Anyone with half a brain cell should have seen that.(No surprise then that Lake Worth's own Maxwell, Triolo, Szerdi and Amaroso were pushing this). The John Prince Park site is too small ,with too many logistical and legal problems to overcome. The ball club owners want the most bang for their buck, and John Prince Park never fit that bill. Never mind that it just happens to be a public park. The only thing that will be sacrificed by elected officials cheerleading for the John Prince Park site(who were willing to sacrifice their own mothers in the name of the most holy "ECONMIC DEVELOPMENT ") wil. l be their own public offices

Anonymous said...

You had your chances to run this year. What happened?

Lynn Anderson said...

The commission says it wants to run this city like a business. Well, it seems to me, that the corporations know more about what makes sense than do our visionaries. The baseball owners are in it to make money.

City governments, on the other hand, are in it to provide city services and NOT waste money or over-charge the resident or to put nooses around the necks of its taxpayers. That's what it should be about.