Homestead Sports
Complex
Homestead
Sports Complex is a baseball training facility located less
than three miles from downtown Homestead, Florida. The facility, seats 6,500 and expands
to 9,000, and provides parking for over 3,900 vehicles. A 200 bed dormitory
facility located on the grounds of the Homestead Sports Complex complements the
training facilities. The dormitories consist of 30 single rooms and 84 double
rooms that are complete with restrooms, showers, dressing areas, a full service
kitchen and recreational areas.
In 1991
the City of Homestead built
the Sports Complex at a price tag of 22 million dollars in order to provide a
Spring Training facility for the Cleveland Indians. The stadium was widely
recognized as being state-of-the-art for the time period, as it included
multiple practice facilities as well as dormatories for players. The Indians
had previously played in the Cactus League in Arizona but had signed a
deal to make Homestead their long-term Spring Training home. Cleveland was due
to begin full-time play at the stadium in the 1993 season. In 1992 they had
already begun moving equipment and personnel to Florida. However, on August 24,
1992, Hurricane Andrew made
landfall in Homestead as a Category 5 cyclone with winds reaching 165 mph.
The stadium, directly in the path of the hurricane, was decimated. The Indians
quickly began meetings with lawyers and eventually they exercised an "out
clause" in the contract.
The city decided to
immediately re-construct the stadium hoping that they could have it built for
the 1994 Spring Training season in order for the Indians, or perhaps another
team to use. However, without a spring facility for the 1993 season Cleveland
was forced to look quickly for another home. The Boston Red Sox had been using Winter Haven, Florida's Chain of Lakes Park as
their training facility for 26 years. However, the Red Sox were moving to Fort Myers for the 1993 season, thus
allowing the Indians to use Chain of Lakes as their spring facility in the
meantime. However, knowing the situation that the Indians were in, the City
allowed the team to use the stadium on the condition that they sign a 10-year
contract. Cleveland had no other choice, so they signed the deal and left
Homestead without a team.
The City decided to
continue re-building the stadium, assuming that at some point in the future
they could lure another team to use it as their spring facility. The stadium
was re-constructed in a very short period of time, as the original blueprints
were kept. However, after about five years without a tenant it started to
appear that the facility may never be used as a home for baseball. In the
meantime, new spring training facilities were constructed such as Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Florida and Champion Stadium at Walt Disney World. The new stadiums began to
surpass Homestead Sports Complex in terms of facility size and technology. The
stadium had to look at other options in order to pay the nearly $450,000 per
year in order to maintain it.
It was offered as a home
for the US Soccer Federation to conduct its training, but they declined. In
1999 the facility was used as part of the filming of the Oliver Stone movie Any Given Sunday. In 2002 an HBO series
called Baseball Wives was
to be primarily filmed at the Stadium, but the show was canceled before ever
getting off the ground. In 2004, it served as the home of the Florida Thunder, the city's Pro Cricket team. Recently the facility
has hosted local youth and adult sports on the training grounds but the
internal workings of the stadium such as bathrooms, electrical and plumbing
have gone into disrepair. The park had been used as a home for the City of Homestead's Fourth of July celebration until the
Homestead-Miami Speedway took over the duties in 2010, attracting an
exponentially larger crowd than ever before.
It remains to be seen if
the stadium will ever host spring training baseball. Given the age of the
stadium and the condition that it currently sits in, it would be hard to find a
tenant for the facility without spending large amounts of money on updates and
improvements. A portion of the facility was sold and a company called Charter
Schools USA will be building a school on the grounds.
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