Ariz., Fla. vie for spring training teams, tourists

HAINES CITY, Fla. (AP)

During spring training, every baseball team has a hangout near the stadium where fans meet after the game for some hot eats and cold beers.

Mannino’s Pizza, across the street from the Kansas City Royals’ training complex, fits that bill here, although probably for the last year.

After 14 years in central Florida, Kansas City is leaving for Arizona’s Cactus League to play in a new stadium in suburban Phoenix. Their departure — likely this year, maybe in 2002 — is going to leave a big hole in Mannino’s business.

“That’s going to cream us,” said manager Cary Durbin.

Spring training is a booming business, with Arizona and Florida welcoming hundreds of thousands of out-of-state tourists every spring. Those visitors rent cars, sleep in hotels and eat meals at places like Mannino’s, all of which adds up to a a loud jingle in the coffers of both states.

A study commissioned by the Florida Sports Foundation found that spring training brought an economic impact of $490 million last year, up 63 percent from 1991. More than 5,500 full-time jobs are supported and attendance at the state’s 19 ballparks was nearly 1.6 million.

It was this impact that recently prompted the state to take a more active role in shoring up the 20-team Grapefruit League against raids from the Southwest. Last June, Gov. Jeb Bush signed a law that allocates $75 million in sales-tax revenue over 30 years to help upgrade five spring training stadiums.

“It’s good for our economy,” David Bishop, spokesman for the Governor’s Office on Tourism, Trade and Economic Development, said of taxpayers’ support for private teams. “There’s this special fascination people have with baseball. People will venture down from wherever to watch their team in Florida.”

In Arizona, the 10-team Cactus League says spending from out-of-state fans totaled nearly $200 million in 1998, the year of its most recent survey. Attendance that year was 904,000.

“Without question, they are buttressing the metro Phoenix and Tucson economy, as well as the state’s economic picture,” said Jerry Geiger, president of the Cactus League Association.

With such an impact upon their states’ financial health, it’s no wonder that legislative leaders in Arizona and Florida want to ensure their league’s growth and stability.

When the Cleveland Indians decided to move from Tucson to Florida in 1993, it delivered a potentially crippling blow to the Cactus League.

“We were at a minimum critical mass, where if one or two other teams wanted to move to Florida, the league was possibly in danger,” Geiger said.

The state was already moving to keep the other teams happy. In 1992, the Arizona Legislature passed a bill allowing Maricopa and Pima counties — where Phoenix and Tucson are located, respectively — to form stadium districts, which can create taxes aimed at renovating its baseball stadiums.

Since 1992, county government alone has spent $71 million to build or renovate seven stadiums in the Phoenix area. Pima County leaders not only paid to renovate the Indians’ old stadium in Tucson for the expansion Colorado Rockies, it also built a new complex to house the Chicago White Sox and Arizona Diamondbacks.

Although it was too late to keep the Indians from moving to Florida, no other team has threatened to leave the Cactus League since.

“If you can’t provide even the more basic stuff and somebody else is willing to, then you are in danger of losing teams,” Geiger said.

Now, nearly a decade later, a 1-percent hike in the Maricopa bed tax and a surcharge on car rentals has generated $73 million for spring training facilities.

That new money is how the city of Surprise was able to woo the Royals and Texas Rangers, who will share a training complex. The suburb on Phoenix’s northwestern edge can afford the $45 million stadium because the state is footing half the bill.

Like Arizona and the Indians, Florida needed a scare of its own before it began to rethink its relationship with the Grapefruit League.

In 1998, the Los Angeles Dodgers — the only West Coast team to train in Florida — approached Arizona officials about moving out of Vero Beach. Geiger described the possibility of landing the Dodgers as “the biggest coup we could ever pull off.”

Florida lawmakers, not wanting to lose one of the Grapefruit League’s premier teams, helped Vero Beach and Indian River County develop a counteroffer. A bill would’ve set aside $7.5 million to help Vero Beach buy and redo the Dodgertown training facility, but Bush vetoed the use of state money, saying it didn’t provide a statewide benefit.

David Cardwell, executive director of the Grapefruit League Association, said Bush’s thinking wasn’t out of line with how Florida has treated the Grapefruit League in the past.

“Historically, it’s always been the local venues vying for teams,” Cardwell said.

But Florida got a reprieve when the Dodgers turned down a a Phoenix-area Indian tribe’s proposal to build them a new training complex. That allowed Florida lawmakers to revamp their original proposal by expanding its scope to help more local governments refurbish old ballparks and build new ones.

“It’s a quality-of-life issue,” said state Sen. Jack Latvala of Palm Harbor, the law’s sponsor. “It’s an opportunity to see a major-league team for a reasonable amount of money, get autographs and take the kids.”