New Home for Red Sox

BY GLENN MILLER • GMILLER@NEWS-PRESS.COM • APRIL 30, 2009
Daniels Parkway Wins OUt for Red Sox
In the end, Lee County commissioners selected the least controversial site - the site with the fewest permitting and environmental issues - for the Boston Red Sox new spring training complex and stadium.The board voted Wednesday afternoon to place the new facility, scheduled to open in 2012, at the Watermen-Pinnacle site on Daniels Parkway, a little more than a mile east of Interstate 75.

The backup choice, if negotiations between county staff and the developer falter, is the University Highland site just north of Germain Arena in Estero.

The selection was good news for Watermen principal Eddy Garcia.

"It was nerve-wracking, to say the least," Garcia said. "We felt we had all the dynamics going."
All five commissioners had Watermen-Pinnacle in their top two. Tammy Hall and Frank Mann listed it first. Bob Janes and Ray Judah had it second. Brian Bigelow had Watermen and University Highland in no particular order, but was leaning toward Watermen.
The most controversial of the four sites, Edison Farms, did not make the cut.

"While we are disappointed with the news from the Lee County commission and had hoped for a different outcome, we remain very proud of our team and the vision we proposed," Edison Farms spokeswoman Heather Mikes wrote in an e-mail Wednesday night to The News-Press.
"We believe Edison Farms' vision for Fenway South was unlike the other proposals, in that it would have provided a number of public benefits to the region without imposing additional tax burdens on the residents of Lee County."

The Edison Farms site was criticized by environmental groups all through the process and again during the public comment session of Wednesday's meeting in the commission chambers.
"It seems incredible to me that the board can select a site that is so environmentally sensitive," Estero resident Phil Douglas said during the meeting.

Commissioners Ray Judah and Frank Mann were intrigued, though, by the potential of the site. Edison Farms president Jason Wagner told the commission he was raising the company's offer of land for preservation from 1,280 acres to 2,000 acres.