Red Sox stadium hopes to open in time for spring training
Story Created: Dec 20, 2011 at 4:48 AM America/New_York

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FORT MYERS, Fla.- Crews are working non-stop to get the future spring training home of the Boston Red Sox ready for action early next year. WINK News is getting just one more sneak peek of the park before the opening next spring and now you can get a glimpse, too.     

Construction has moved at a rapid pace. To put it in perspective, the team held a commencement of construction ceremony on March 3, 2011, back when it was nothing but flat land. Plenty of work has been done, but there's still plenty more to do and they hope to finish exactly one year from that commencement ceremony on March 3, 2012, on time for the team to play ball.

"Everybody's working hard. There's not a doubt in anyone's mind that we're gonna be ready to play ball I believe March 3rd is the first game. We're gonna be ready, it's gonna be spotless. It's going to be a beautiful stadium," said the project manager, Bob Taylor.

The new JetBlue park is starting to look more like it's artistic renderings every day. The Bermuda grass is down, the 37-foot-tall green monster is up and thousands of seats are just waiting to be filled.

"A little over 10,000 fixed seats," said Katie Haas, Red Sox Director of Florida Business Operations. "At City of Palms, it was 75 to 76 [hundred] fixed seats. So, it's about a 26 percent fixed capacity increase."

Work at the $80 million facility has been swift. In the last nine months, there have been anywhere from 250 to 325 workers on this site every day. Roughly 60 percent are local.

"It's been a significant effort, certainly great for the local economy, a high percentage are local workers. So it's been an incentive for the local workforce here in Lee County," Lee County Public Works Director, Doug Meuer, said.    

Red Sox spring training tickets went on sale Saturday, and just hours after, they were already popping up on Ebay.

The team's Director of Florida Operations says there's a waiting list of about 800 people for spring training season tickets. The hope is that the added seating at JetBlue park, will help shrink that list.

All the work is supposed to be done by the third week in January, just in time for the team to get used to their new digs.


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