Atlanta Braves new Spring Facility will not be ready next February

The last season for Spring ball at Walt Disney World is about to begin… uh, wait a minute…

In a surprise announcement this morning, the Atlanta Braves have announced that the new facility in North Port – expected to open by January 2019 – will not be ready as originally scheduled.

On the heels of news last week of cost overruns that will cost the Braves considerably more to get North Port finished, this announcement suggests that the new stadium complex will lose 1-2 months of construction time over the next year.

That not only meant an inability to use the fields for Spring Training in 2019, but it also required that the Braves go back to Disney World once again and negotiate one more additional year to use Champion Stadium and its facilities.

That is the substance of today’s announcement as tweeted above.

So the lengthy bus rides will continue for one additional year, continuing what is most probably the longest road trips (on average) in all of Spring baseball.

There has been no announcement on the specifics of the holdup that had led to the delay.

Of note, the new Ballpark of the Palm Beaches – Spring home of both the Astros and Nationals – was completed on time (barely) with roughly one less month than the Braves had for their schedule.  The work on that complex began on November 9th, 2015, opening in February 2017.

The Braves broke ground at North Port last October 16th, and at the time expected the cost of the facility to be $100 million (already up from an original estimate of $75-80 million).

Last week we learned that the team is going to have to absorb an additional $10 milion (+/-) in overruns.

The Astros/Nationals park was drawn up in the range of $120 million, escalating to $135 at the time of ground-breaking.  Their final number was roughly $152 to $153 million.

Next: How many things could have been different

But this setback also means that Atlanta has to maintain their presence at Disney – all the while also prepping for North Port, which they do plan to use now for a single event in the Spring of 2019.