Lee County believes Manhattan Construction is perfect for possible stadium repairs

Lee County says that part of Hammond Stadium, the spring training home of the Minnesota Twins, will be off-limits to fans.

The area of the park known as the boardwalk has ticket sales halted for now. The county says that the company that built the boardwalk is best quipped to study what could be wrong.

Manhattan Construction helped to renovate Hammond Stadium in 2015 and built that boardwalk. Now, it slopes for an unknown reason.

Lee County leaders are confident that Manhattan is best for the job. Officials made it clear that their relationship with Manhattan is strong. Dave Harner is Lee County’s deputy manager. “Manhattan is a company that does work all over the country. They’re a very good company, they’ve worked with us before. They’ll continue to work with us,” Harner said.

Their body of work speaks for itself. The company has been involved in projects such as Raymond James Stadium in Tampa and AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, one of the world’s most expensive sports venues in the world.

Earlier this year, Lee County and Manhattan Construction signed an agreement that requires the company to inspect the stadium and evaluate its potential issues. “The partnership that helped build the stadium is the same partnership that is working to address the concerns that we have,” said Harner.

The county is stressing that it’s too soon to understand what, if any, repairs or renovations will have to occur. Manhattan is set to do an engineering study. Then the county will have an independent firm review and verify it.

It is unclear who will make the repairs if it’s discovered that repairs are necessary.

Roger Desjarlais is the Lee County Manager. “To talk about who’s gonna do the remediation if it’s required… It’s just a little premature to try and have that conversation,” Desjarlais said.

The conversation about that won’t happen until the independent review is done. According to a county spokesperson, those studies will be paid for with tax dollars. Manhattan also built JetBlue Park.

WINK News reached out to Manhattan Construction, but we have not yet heard back.