West Villages Improvement District: North Port ready to reap the benefits of hosting spring training baseball

The Atlanta Braves have already made their presence felt in the local community; local officials hope to take advantage of the increased visibility.

NORTH PORT — National visibility is the first big benefit North Port area economic leaders point to from the Sept. 2017 decision by the Atlanta Braves to relocate its Spring Training home to the West Villages.

“Obviously the biggest thing is it’s put North Port on the map,” said Bill Gunnin, executive director of the North Port Area Chamber of Commerce. “Whether it’s visitors, tourism, people looking to do business here or move here, it’s put North Port on the map.”

The second biggest impact may be the Braves’ commitment to deal with local businesses, whether it was the choice of the Adams Group to install custom cabinets in the new $139-million complex at 18800 S. West Villages Parkway or a recent catering order with the city’s iconic Olde World Restaurant.

Meanwhile, Mike Dunn, vice president of Florida Operations for the Atlanta Braves; and Christina Shaw, the director of Special Events and Hospitality, spent countless hours getting to work with area businesses and nonprofits in south Sarasota County.

“They automatically became involved in the community, they’ve done a great job marketing, doing business locally — everything,” Gunnin said. ’They’ve had events out there (at CoolToday Park), they’ve used food trucks that are our members out there, they’ve had nonprofits working to raise money — they’re always looking to do local business first, to support our community.”

For example, in August, when North Port resident Emanne Beasha was appearing on America’s Got Talent, Jim Kraft, the director of Client Services, reached out to North Port City Commissioner Jill Luke, who has personal connections with Emanne’s family, to host a watch party, so North Port residents could cheer her on while watching the performance on the 80-foot by 40-foot video scoreboard.

CoolToday Park — with an event lawn that has become home to weekly farmers markets and special events and the Tomahawk Tiki Bar, which is open daily for lunch and dinner inside the stadium — has given North Port residents more than an 8,000-seat stadium to watch baseball games.

Cool Today Park has given North Port residents a sense of place in the West Villages that’s not part of a gated subdivision.

CoolToday partnered with Venice Pier Group to create a Thursday night summer movies series, with two movies offered each month for a $5 fee and hosted a performance by the Venice Symphony.

The city of North Port moved the July 4 Freedom Festival to the stadium for better community access.

This summer baseball-related activities will expand, with the Braves’ Florida State League team, the Florida Fire Frogs, moving from Kissimmee to CoolToday Park. The stadium already hosts the Braves rookie teams in the Gulf Coast League.

A signature win

But from a national point of view, the very fact that the Braves chose North Port as its new Florida home has made corporations look twice.

Ron Starner, senior vice president of Conway Inc., the corporate parent company to Site Selection Magazine, said the Braves decision to move to North Port was the type of “signature win that most communities around the state would sell their firstborn for.”

Rick Severance, president of the West Villages — the 9,650-acre development that hosts the Braves and CoolToday Park — noted that the facility helps create an ambiance for the area,

“Anytime you bring in such a significant strategic partner to the city, it really elevates everything around it,” Severance said. “Great communities have a mix of really wonderful places.

“As we work on developing our downtown — which will come out of the ground in the next month — everything is in complement of each other.”

Severance, who joined Mattamy Homes as president of its West Villages Division in July, said he was especially impressed with the Braves’ approach to developing ballplayers. The club recently opened up its new $14-million Baseball Academy.

“They don’t grow them as ballpayers, they grow them as men, which is a wonderful thing for the region,” he added.

Mike Postle, vice president of construction and project management for Lodgco, the Mount Pleasant, Michigan-based hospitality company building the new 100-Room Hampton Inn & Suites hotel on Tuscola Boulevard, said that the Braves’ decision to relocate to North Port was a huge deciding factor for the family-owned company to build its fourth Florida-based hotel in the city.

“An organization like them coming to North Port, there has to be something going on, right?” Postle said. “That’s what piqued our interest first, when we heard they were coming here. That’s when we really started looking hard.”

North Port Area Chamber of Commerce capitalized on that increased attention by moving the date for its 34th annual Business and Community Expo at the George Mullen Activity Center to Saturday morning, just prior to the city of North Port’s welcome-to-the-neighborhood event, “The BIG Rally.”

“You’ve got everybody coming in with the Braves, so they wanted to promote North Port businesses,” North Port Mayor Debbie McDowell said.

North Port Economic Development Manager Mel Thomas is quick to point out that North Port, which turned 60 in 2019, has been growing and improving the quality of life in the city to the point where it could be attractive for other businesses to relocate.

She points to amenities like the multimodal trails that parallel Sumter and Toledo Blade boulevards and the 81 miles of canals — much of which is open to kayak enthusiasts.

“This is a matter of place-making,” Thomas said, then later added that the Braves locating in North Port has “provided the quality of life,” so when people are scouting for space, for value of land, it makes North Port that much more attractive.

To help show that, the city is partnering with the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County to host an inbound mission of national business representatives to tour the area Feb. 27-29 — including a visit to CoolToday Park for the Feb. 28 game when the Braves host the New York Yankees.

The city did something similar in 2019, when it partnered with the EDC and Visit Sarasota County to bring in travel writers and business site selectors.

This excursion, Thomas said, is more business-oriented.
“We know we only have one inaugural opening season,” Thomas said, “and we’re using it to our advantage.”

Ali H. Johnston, MBA in Real Estate