VERO BEACH — Minor League Baseball officials hope their plans for the former Dodgertown will bring year-round business to local hotels, restaurants, stores and health clubs.

Craig Callan, the vice president of MiLB Vero Beach, updated the Taxpayers’ Association of Indian River County at its monthly membership meeting Wednesday on the future of the former spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“Our goal is to have different various sport entities train at Dodgertown,” he said.

Football, soccer, lacrosse and baseball teams would be able to use Dodgertown’s fields, Callan said, but he’s doubtful a MiLB team would call Dodgertown home.

He has several weekly meetings during the ongoing planning process and one this week with Major League Women’s Soccer.

Callan said he’s seeking professional and college football teams to use the complex. Dodgertown has been used as a training facility by the New Orleans Saints and other NFL teams, he said, as well as by Ohio State University and the University of Miami.

If Disney’s Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando is ranked at the top of a scale from 1 to 10, Callan said he wants the former Dodgertown to be an 8.

“Dodgertown is a jewel of Vero Beach and Indian River County,” he said.

Its 26 employees have been doing internal work by renovating rooms and fixing things around the facility, Callan said. He also hired a sales executive.

“Business is slow,” he said. “The economy is still sputtering.”

The complex’s upcoming events include a softball tournament and concert and St. Helen’s Harvest Festival.

But Callan said he expected business to stay slow until February when RussMatt Baseball, which operates college spring training tournaments, uses the site for college and high school baseball tournaments from Feb. 20 through April 24.

Local hotels already have reported team bookings.

“We’ll be bringing in different teams who will go out into the community and need lodging and meals,” he said.

After some Major League Baseball teams shopped for a new facility but didn’t choose Dodgertown, Callan said MiLB decided to run Dodgertown as a business and preserve it for baseball.

He said MiLB, which runs 20 leagues, in May signed a five-year contract with Indian River County with two options to renew.

The monthly cost to run Dodgertown is between $125,000 and $140,000, Callan said. The county agreed to pay $100,000 monthly until the end of the year.

“The one thing we did not want is for Dodgertown to be shuttered long-term,” he said. “There’s too much history. There’s too much tradition.”

The Brooklyn Dodgers began spring training at Dodgertown in 1948 and became the Los Angeles Dodgers 10 years later. The team left Dodgertown last year and moved to Arizona.

Callan still is waiting to get approval from the Los Angeles Dodgers to name the complex Historic Dodgertown.
By Laurie K. Blandford, TCPalm.com

Tags: athletic complex, college, dodgertown, history, minor league baseball

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 10:02 am and is filed under Economy, Sports, Treasure Coast business, Vero Beach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.