The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches is starting to take shape.

The future spring training home of the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals in West Palm Beach is set to open next spring. Despite the relatively short time frame, Brady Ballard is confident construction will be done on time.

"Construction continues to go well. Everybody knows the time line, but that's the way the project has been managed from the start," said Ballard, who was hired as general manager of The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches last month. "There's good confidence that everything will continue as planned.

"There's been continued progress to where the clubhouse footprints are all poured and there's areas in which the stadium has gone vertical as far as some of the primary walls. It's all going quite well. The retaining wall in right field, which is part of Nationals clubhouse, has gone vertical and the Astros side is well underway, too."

Once completed, Ballard said the new facility will be unlike most spring training sites in Florida.

The majority of the Grapefruit League sites, including Tradition Field in Port St. Lucie, have the stadium adjacent to the parking lot with the practice fields behind the stadium.

"The layout here will be one of the best features," Ballard said. "Once you get out of your car, you're going to have the opportunity to walk through the practice fields while you're making your way to the stadium. The stadium is kind of the centerpiece of the facility. It's not at the forefront like you see at some other setups. They took some elements of Arizona in the layout.

"It will have an old Florida feel with new amenities. It will have a good amount of shade and a lot of trees put in."

For many players on the east coast of Florida, the new stadium can't open soon enough. Players from both the Astros and Nationals have vented this spring about long bus rides from their current spring training homes — the Astros in Kissimmee and the Nationals in Viera.

Astros designated hitter Evan Gattis said every road trip, except for the Atlanta Braves in Lake Buena Vista and the Detroit Tigers in Lakeland, is more than an hour long.

Once The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches opens, five teams — including the New York Mets in Port St. Lucie and Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals in Jupiter — will be within an hour drive.

"It will be much nicer and the travel time will be shorter," Mets general manager Sandy Alderson said. "It's nice to have two teams that are more or less permanently on the east coast, so a lot of the uncertainty related to Viera and Kissimmee will have been resolved, and that's positive for baseball on the east coast of Florida."

Ballard said it's not only the players that will benefit from having five teams in close proximity.

"It's a great thing for fans," he said. "Whether they're devoted to one team or the casual baseball fan coming down for their spring training venture, it makes it easier to see five different teams at three different stadiums."

 

Source : tcpalm.com

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