News
East Polk County Feels Part of $20 Million Stimulus
Published: Monday, April 06, 2009
RussMatt Baseball Central Florida Invitational Economic Impact
WINTER HAVEN - Local business owners brought in $20 million to $24 million from the RussMatt Baseball Central Florida Invitational, which was held for the first time this year in Polk County.
Those numbers, released Thursday by Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing, reveal the impact on Polk County's economy to be much greater than the expected $16 million. According to Tourism and Sports Marketing figures, county businesses were expected to lose about $25 million in commerce as a result of the Cleveland Indians' move to Goodyear, Ariz., from Winter Haven for spring training this year.
However, the economic impact of the RussMatt event nearly recovered it all.
"With that infusion of dollars, it's an economic stimulus for Winter Haven and Polk County," said Mark Jackson, director of Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing. If it had not been for RussMatt-related tourists, he said, "We had several businesses tell us they would have closed after April 1."
Overall, 215 college baseball teams came to Polk County and played 807 games during this year's invitational, which started Feb. 22 and ended Saturday.
For hotels and restaurants close to Winter Haven's Chain O' Lakes Complex, one of two major East Polk sites for the baseball games, the invitational essentially made up for the loss of the Indians.
"Our hotels for the first three weeks of March were booked," said Desiree Chasse, director of sales and marketing at the Holiday Inn and Hampton Inn on Cypress Gardens Boulevard. That occupancy rate is about the same as it was each March when the Indians were training at Chain of Lakes Stadium, she said.
The hotels charged lower rates for the student fans of college teams playing in the RussMatt event because their budgets likely were smaller than the Indians fans' budgets. Revenue was down slightly, Chasse said, but she added that the RussMatt event still had "a huge impact."
The Clarion Inn at 1150 Third St., S.W., also saw revenue from RussMatt. Cindy Bulkilvish, the director of sales, said the hotel booked about 1,000 rooms to RussMatt players and others associated with the baseball series.
"We got a fair share of business and we're happy about it," Bulkilvish said.
Bulkilvish said she did not know if there was any difference between the RussMatt room figures and the number of rooms booked when the Indians held spring training in Winter Haven.
Dawn Richards, the proprietor of Outback Steakhouse, at 170 Cypress Gardens Blvd. in Winter Haven, said March was a very good month for the restaurant.
"I was really nervous about losing the Indians," Richards said, but Outback's move to open for lunch helped the business on all fronts. "We're great. We're up in sales."
Richards said she thought more RussMatt players and fans visited Outback than Indians players and fans, since the restaurant was often open during the Indians' games and seemingly closed whenever fans and players had a little free time.
Several rental properties near Davenport, such as Bahama Bay Resort, Sunsplash Vacation Homes and Regal Palms Resort, housed about 65 percent of the RussMatt teams, said Cindy Hummel, the special projects director for the city of Auburndale.
Auburndale hosted many of the RussMatt invitational games at its new Lake Myrtle Sports Complex off Berkley Road.
Hummel projected a promising future for Auburndale's economy during upcoming RussMatt tournaments. She said the city recently changed the zoning on tracts of land near the sports complex, making them commercial property. The hundreds or thousands of RussMatt tourists on their way to Lake Myrtle passed by those sites of future businesses, she said, and she guessed that RussMatt's economic impact will continue to grow during future RussMatt tournaments.
The Indians moved their spring training to Winter Haven in 1993, and their contract with the city expired in 2008. In January, Winter Haven filed a lawsuit against the Indians for about $100,000 in unpaid revenue from the 2004 and 2005 seasons.
RussMatt Baseball recently signed a 10-year contract with Polk County Tourism and Sports Marketing to hold its invitational in the area, with a focus on the Lake Myrtle Sports Complex in Auburndale and Winter Haven's Chain O' Lakes Complex. Some local high school fields also were used for invitational games this year.