Red Sox move changes Fort Myers economical lanscape
Steven Williams
For nearly 20 years, Bonnie Grunberg, the owner of The Oasis Restaurant in Fort Myers Fla., has gladly greeted and served fans of the Boston Red Sox during the annual spring training migration. She converses with as many customers as possible and even greets some with a friendly hug. But there may be fewer hugs and fewer customers to enjoy her food in the coming years because of the opening of jetBlue Park, a new stadium that the Red Sox will use from 2012 and onward. The Red Sox moved from just a couple blocks away in downtown Fort Myers to the outskirts of the city, far from a convenient location for fans before or after the game. When Grunberg first learned of the impending Boston Red Sox move near her restaurant in 1992, she said she was afraid of the impact such a big move would have on her budding business. The fear of how a team moving to a new spring training location would affect business, especially one as popular as the Red Sox, was a legitimate one. Whether it would be positive or negative, the impact was bound to be large. Grunberg said there was no way to know what would happen to the business of the surrounding area before the move. “We didn’t know what kind of impact it would have,” Grunberg said. “It was amazing. It was amazing the business it brought into this area.” The positive impact didn’t stop with Grunberg’s business. Sarah Heusing, Guest Services Coordinator of the Crown Plaza Hotel in Fort Myers, said even though business is affected a bit by the business, the positive impacts of spring training are still evident. “We do events throughout the year with baseball and especially in March it’s a big baseball month for us,” Heusing said. “We’re constantly doing beer tastings and drink-all-you-want beer and all-you-can-eat wing nights. Dinner with the Red Sox where we have the players come here and guests can do stuff like that and get autographs.” How to adjust
Grunberg has benefitted from the nearby location of City of Palms Park since they arrived in 1993, but that changed when the Red Sox built a new stadium just outside of Fort Myers in 2012. The move that initially made her skeptical early on in her business ventures was now threatening to take some of her business to a new location. Mielke said The Oasis Restaurant thrived because of the location nearby the Red Sox but Grunberg doesn’t think the damage will be as extensive as Mielke. Grunberg said her restaurant was prepared to lose between 20-30 percent of business on game days. But she isn’t going to take that lying down. She said she is trying to be proactive when figuring out how to make up the lost business. “On Wednesday nights we bring in some entertainment,” Grunberg said. “That’s helped increase Wednesday night’s business. It’s really hard to compete with the game because that amount of people coming in to the area there’s nothing I can do to compete with that amount of people that would come downtown to go to the game. Grunberg said she hopes the relationships she’s built in the community will keep the usual customers coming. “We’re going to feel it,” Grunberg said. “We know this. We are trying to be as creative as we can. But that’s an audience that we have built up over 19 years.” No matter what happens to the stadium and her business, Grunberg realizes the economic boost the Red Sox have done and will continue to do for the community. “They bring a lot of money into the area, God bless [the Red Sox],” she said. “Whether it’s downtown or down south the money is coming into Lee County and that’s a good thing. I’m not going to ever say that that’s not a good thing. I’m saying people should also realize that money that came into Lee County into downtown that a good part of that will be gone.” Grunberg is just relying on her smile and her out of the way friendly service to keep bringing the majority of her business coming back for more. |
The Overall Impact
Not all believed that spring training has a positive impact on the local areas around Florida. Jeff Mielke, executive director of the Lee County Sports Authority said people in the county voiced their concerns about the actual value of having two spring training teams. “There was a lot of conjecture going on about spring training was really just an attraction,” Mielke said. “People would come to Lee County or Fort Myers for other reasons and would take on spring training just as an added bonus.” The concern prompted a study for the Lee County Visitor and Convention Bureau to determine the extent of the impact in the local Fort Myers area. The biggest question mark was whether visitors from outside of Fort Myers traveled to the city with the main purpose of seeing a Red Sox or Minnesota Twins game or if it was something they chose to do while visiting the city for other reasons. The results the Lee County study found were staggering. The study found that 57 percent of those attending spring training activities came to the Fort Myers area for the primary purpose of attending spring training. The overall economic impact of spring training on Lee County totaled more than $47 million, which doesn’t include the amount spent at ballparks or through ticket sales. Of the total, more than $12 million was spent on shopping and more than $11 million was spent on food and beverages alone. Mielke said the results of the study have changed some people’s opinions on spring training in Lee County. “I think it really made a lot of the naysayers in our community kind of open their eyes a little bit and realize how powerful it really was,” Mielke said. Mielke said the county was able to pay for the team and their new stadium because of a bed tax. The idea of the tax is to not make the people who live in the county have to pay for something they might not have to use as much, Mielke said. The bed tax is a tax for tourists or individuals who stay in hotels who are usually from out of town. Because spring training is something that draws tourists in, the county created a tax that would allow that tourism to be the primary way to pay for the maintenance and functioning of the ballpark. |