A Level Playing Field?

For Art Baker, March Madness is all about baseball, not college basketball. His downtown Fort Myers sports bar is packed before and after Boston Red Sox spring training games at nearby City of Palms Park, tripling the revenue Hide-A-Way Sports Bar brings in from any other month.

Baker’s business is so tied to the Red Sox that he advertises his nearly three-year-old restaurant at the Fort Myers ballpark and in Boston, and he hosts parties in front of his Dean Street establishment for spring training guests. When the six weeks are over, the bar crowds return to normal. These days, Baker wonders what he’s going to do when the Red Sox move to south Lee County.

Baker already is contemplating plans to shuttle fans to his sports bar from the new stadium, which could open in 2012, but he recognizes the inevitable. "The Red Sox are a great draw. Once we get the team moving south, of course we’re going to lose a big share of that," he says. "Being as far south as they’re going to go is going to leave us pretty much out of the loop for spring training with the Red Sox. It’s depressing."

Like county officials and other businesspeople, Baker hopes that the City of Palms Park won’t sit vacant, but will gain a third franchise—possibly the Baltimore Orioles—for the county, joining the Red Sox and the Minnesota Twins, who train at the Lee County Sports Complex. "It’s imperative for us in the downtown district to get another team in there to utilize that stadium," he says.

The idea of three major league teams spending the spring in the county is entirely possible, say proponents, and one more reason to build the new stadium so the Red Sox will stay in Lee County.

After Sarasota’s efforts failed to lure the Sox away, Lee County officials penciled a deal with the team that promises a new stadium in south Lee County in exchange for 30 more years of Boston players—and fans—descending on the area every February and March.