Pinellas County and a local developer are looking at plans to attract a major league baseball team to the area, and it’s not the Tampa Bay Rays.
County officials are looking at a proposal to turn the old Toytown Landfill in St. Petersburg into a massive spring training facility for the Atlanta Braves.
Developers call it SportsPark, a $662 million complex with, among other things, a 10,000 seat baseball stadium, more than a dozen soccer fields, a soccer and track stadium and even a 4,400 bed dormitory.
Although developers aren’t commenting on the proposed project, Atlanta Braves officials are throwing their support behind it.
“We believe that we can enhance and grow (the area's) baseball heritage by relocating our spring training operations to this new development and Pinellas County," said Braves President John Schuerholz in a letter to SportsPark developers and county officials.
For the last 18 years, the Braves have trained at Disney’s ESPN World Wide of Sports complex in Kissimmee.
Currently, an aviation club uses part of the 240-acre landfill site to fly model airplanes.
They never thought they could face the prospect of being moved out.
“A lot of us will probably either join other clubs or go fly in the parks somewhere,” said Luis Espinosa.
There are two other proposals for the site that both call for it to be turned into a multi-use park, residential and office space complex, but the SportsPark concept is at the top of the list.
County commissioners are expected to take up the issue sometime next month.