Starner went on to say that what North Port needs to do is “double down on primary industries” - referring to manufacturers such as King Plastic Corp. “The good news here is, you have a blank slate and it’s up to you to fill that canvas.” “These are people who have actual projects in play and they don’t really have an impression of North Port. “It tells me, you have an undiscovered gem on your hands, is what it tells me,” Starner said. Another recognized the city as being open to new business with low impact fees and attractive land cost compared to Tampa and Orlando. He cited some recent corporate perceptions of North Port that ranged from total unfamiliarity or labeling it as a bedroom community, or citing some potential but lack of proper promotion of its assets. Starner talked about how major corporations are primarily looking for sites to relocate headquarters and back-office work and advanced manufacturing. Site Selection is a 65-year-old publication that tracks corporate real estate expansion. The man who preceded him on the dais, Ron Starner, senior vice president of Conway Inc., the corporate parent company to Site Selection Magazine, set Dunn up perfectly when he called the Braves’ decision to move spring training to North Port “the signature win that most communities around the state would sell their first born for.” That alone made him a natural to give the afternoon keynote address Friday at the 2018 North Port Real Estate Summit. NORTH PORT - Mike Dunn, vice president of Florida Operations for the Atlanta Braves, always generates excitement when he talks to local groups about the ongoing construction on the team’s new $140 million spring training facility in the West Villages. All rights reserved.November 14,2018 - Braves spring training complex will be a ‘game changer’ for North Port, analyst says Site and images Copyright © 2019 Charles O’Reilly. EFfective in 2022, the tiki bar is closed on summer Mondays. As is typical at spring training facilities, the stadium has touches that remind fans that they are at the spring home of the Braves, including an outfield seating pavilion with the same naming sponsor as their regular-season home in Georgia. The North Port stadium is open every day, even during the off-season, and features a tiki bar and restaurant on the concourse in left field. That, in turn, prompted the Braves to start holding the majority of their complex league games on the main field, the same as the Orioles do up the road in Sarasota. With the COVID-19 pandemic wiping out the 2020 season, the Fire Frogs never did take the field at CoolToday Park. As it happened, both the Fire Frogs and Stone Crabs were eliminated from the Florida State League when Major League Baseball restructured the minors for 2021. The Fire Frogs were not owned by the Braves (at least as of January 2020) and further play in North Port would require an indemnity payment to the Stone Crabs. The Florida State League’s Florida Fire Frogs, a Braves farm team, left another Osceola County site to join the Braves here for 2020, but whether they would stay for 2021 and beyond appeared to be dependent on negotiation with the Charlotte Stone Crabs, into whose territory the club was moving. In the meantime, select Gulf Coast League games were hosted at the site in 2019. CoolToday Park, sponsored by a regional HVAC contractor, opened for one spring training game in March 2019 and became the full-time spring home of the Atlanta Braves in 2020. Home team: Spring training, Atlanta Braves (2019-present) Florida Complex League Braves, selected games (2019-present)Īfter more than two decades playing second fiddle to property ownership at Walt Disney World in Osceola County, the Atlanta Braves, who also recently built a regular-season park for themselves in the northwest suburbs of the city, acquired land in the West Villages section of North Port for their own complex.
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