The city's chief executive says Lee County should have let the club go to Sarasota.
The Boston Red Sox draw big crowds to Fort Myers for spring training, but the city's mayor says the county would have been better off letting the team go to Sarasota.
A team has a bad year, and everybody jumps ship.
It doesn't help when that team represents a mountain of debt.
Fort Myers Mayor Randy Henderson says if the decision could be reversed, he would let the Boston Red Sox move their spring training site to Sarasota rather than take on the cost for the new JetBlue Park.
Lee County faces more than $436 million in stadium costs over the next 32 years. That includes not only JetBlue but Hammond Stadium a well the former Red Sox home, City of Palms Park.
“It would have been smarter to let the Red Sox move on,” Henderson told the News-Press of Fort Myers.“I would debate that we wouldn’t be any worse off, in fact, I think we would be better off.”
Hammond Stadium is the spring home of the Minnesota Twins, who also train in Fort Myers. The construction of JetBlue Park was done in conjunction with improvements there.
The Red Sox used interest from Sarasota to gain concessions from Fort Myers and Lee County, which does a brisk tourist business because of its two teams.
The city is looking for a third team to use City of Palms Park, which is still functional but has no tenant after the Red Sox moved to JetBlue last spring.
The Washington Nationals were reportedly interested, but the News-Press indicated that move is very unlikely.