America’s First Baseball Hotel is Coming to West Palm Beach

February 24, 2017

Baseball Hotel Development West Palm Beach As some of you know, I love baseball. Specifically I love spring training here and have learned to love minor league and college baseball as well. A couple of years ago spring training baseball was on the ropes in South Florida. The reason was that there was a provision in the leases of the teams here that there had to be at least 4 teams in the area or they could terminate their leases and move West as so many other teams had. Fortunately the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros teamed up with Palm Beach County and committed to developing the new Ballpark of The Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach. Now here is where things get interesting. Jim Crane, the owner of the Houston Astros and part time Florida resident, wanted someplace for his team to be able to stay during spring training and also for the Astro’s minor league team that will play there once spring training ends. The area where the new park is located is an industrial area that had little in the way of contiguous land or property available, probably because it was constructed on a landfill! So Jim went further South and bought an office building on Palm Beach Lakes Blvd. This is going to be converted into a 197 room hotel, the first baseball themed hotel in America and the world for that matter. The property is 10 stories and was purchased for $6.5 million. It is estimated that the Astros will spend $25 to convert the property to a hotel, which includes the $6.5 purchase price. The hotel will be used by the team in January, February and March and then will be open to the public the rest of the year. However there is a possibility that it could be open to the public during that time as well depending on how many rooms the team needs.

The hotel is expected to be complete in 2018 and will bring tourism to an area where the only attraction is Palm Beach Outlets. SO the first baseball themed hotel, owned by a team, used by the team but open to the public is being built right here in Palm Beach County. This is very cool and I am feeling a little pride here for some reason despite the fact that I had absolutely nothing to do with this. I can’t wait to check it out and hope they can get it done by next year. As always thanks for reading and have a great day.