Ballpark’s moniker has proviso attached
Whoever buys naming rights must include ‘the Palm Beaches’ in name.
WEST PALM BEACH — The Houston Astros and Washington Nationals are about to turn their attention to selling the naming rights of the spring training stadium the teams will share south of 45th Street.
But one thing is certain: “The Palm Beaches” always will be part of the ballpark’s name.
As part of a new agreement with the teams and the county, the name of the $135 million complex will include the words “of (or at) the Palm Beaches.”
That means that if a corporation purchases the naming rights, the name of the stadium will end with “at the Palm Beaches” or “of the Palm Beaches.”
“When one of the announcers says something or when the game stories are written, ‘the Palm Beaches’ will become something everyone understands and recognizes,” said Glenn Jergensen, executive director of Palm Beach County’s Tourist Development Council.
“We want to continue to use ‘the Palm Beaches’ in pretty much everything, including the stadium. That is our tourism identity to the world.”
County tourism officials insisted on the agreement with the teams because the county is helping pay off the debt service for the stadium construction bonds with $108 million in revenue over the next 30
years from a county tax on hotels and motels.
The county also chipped in $5 million in bed-tax revenue for the project’s startup costs.
The current name of the complex is “The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.” Although that’s considered a temporary title, it might end up being the permanent name of the stadium when it opens in 2017 and perhaps for another year or two after that.
The teams have heard preliminary interest from some companies over the past 18 months, but they didn’t plan to focus on a naming rights deal until after they secured agreements from the city and county over the new complex.
“It’s now time for us to start putting some effort into that,” Giles Kibbe, general counsel for the Astros, said Tuesday after the County Commission signed off on spring training operating agreements with the teams.
Indications are the teams are prepared to wait as long as it takes for what they consider the best deal, even if it takes several years.
That means there’s a chance the Astros and Nationals will play Grapefruit League games at “The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches” for the first few years.
Nationals Park, the team’s regular season home stadium in Washington, opened in 2008 and has never had a naming rights deal.
The Astros’ home park in Houston is called Minute Maid Park, after the orange-juice maker. It opened in 2000 as the Ballpark at Union Station before changing its name at the start of the season to Enron Field as part of 30-year, $100 million deal with the Houston energy company.
The team got out of that deal after Enron went into bankruptcy in 2002 because of a financial scandal.
Roger Dean Stadium in Jupiter, Palm Beach County’s other spring training facility where the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals play, has had a naming rights deal since it opened in 1998.
It is named after a local car dealer, whose children made an initial $1 million donation for the naming rights in December 1994 — nearly four years before the stadium opened.
Mike Bauer, the stadium’s general manag- er, said the Dean children still make annual payments for the naming rights, but he would not disclose the amount.
In December, William Meyer, chairman of Meyer Jabara Hotels in West Palm Beach, told the Astros and Nationals that he might be interested in purchasing the naming rights.
Team officials told Meyer they would contact him later.
Members of the Meyer family, longtime philanthropists, already have their name on several buildings — including Arthur I. Meyer Jewish Academy (named after William’s late father) and Meyer Amphitheater, built after the family donated $500,000 for it in 1995.