What Recession? Play Ball!

Just What Desperate Florida Homeowners Need...New Ballparks

The Wall Street Journal takes a look at The Cheers & Jeers of a Costly New Ballpark and finds two home run-size, jeer-worthy facilities in the works in the Sunshine State. The Boston Red Sox already have a facility in Fort Myers, but local officials approved a $100 million new facility last year when-the Journal notes-unemployment was already 10%, foreclosures were booming and home values had already fallen 50%. In their infinite wisdom, Lee County officials plan to partially fund the stadium with bed tax increases just as tourism falls to record lows in Southwest Florida. The Florida East Coast version of "Bailout Park" is the recently approved $634 million Florida Marlins stadium slated for beautiful downtown Little Havana. That stadium will seat 37,000, although the Marlins often draw fewer than 1,000 fans in transient-rich, baseball-indifferent South Florida. In a less-than-flattering simile, one Red Sox official describes the future Fort Myers ballpark as "An Oasis In the Middle of A Desert." The only way that analogy works is if these new ballparks somehow offer a wellspring of high-paying jobs and mortgage relief against the arid backdrop of rising unemployment, bad local government decisions and record foreclosures that define today's Florida.