by starfish on March 28, 2008
Dodgers owner Frank McCourt announced that the club has finalized arrangements for their Spring Training complex in Glendale, Ariz., and barring unforeseen circumstances will play there when Spring Training begins in February 2009.
While the departure is bittersweet, especially for those who ever spent any time at Dodgertown, its official announcement is the final and long anticipated step in bringing the organization to the West Coast.
The Dodgers recently celebrated their 60th anniversary in Vero Beach, a site selected when the Dodgers still played in Brooklyn. Throughout the Grapefruit League season, the organization honored its fans, legendary players, coaches, managers, executives, and local officials as part of a month-long opportunity to say “Thank you.”
Among those honored were Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, Maury Wills, Manny Mota, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Rick Monday, and John Shelby, as well as Hall of Fame broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin. Each of the legends was given the opportunity to express their appreciation to the city and the fans for their support.
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by starfish on March 17, 2008
Vero Beach — zip code 32960 — isn’t going anywhere. It may even be reincarnated as someone else’s Spring Training base. Next year, it likely will at least host some country’s pre-World Baseball Classic workouts.
But it’s farewell to Dodgertown. Barring an unforeseen construction glitch in their Glendale, Ariz., destination, “Dem Bums” will draw the Dodgertown shades with Monday afternoon’s exhibition tilt against the Houston Astros.
Dodgertown is its own oxymoron. Charming, obsolete. Scenic, blighted. Comfortable, inconvenient. Hate to leave, love to go.
It has been the crib for generations of Dodgers players, and generations of Brooklyn and Los Angeles fans who have flocked to see them at this redeveloped vacant World War II naval air base. But it’s time for them all to come out from behind the Oz curtain and join the real world. It’s time to run after the parade that has passed them by, in that new $80 million Cactus League complex they will share with the Chicago White Sox.
Time to pull the covers. But, oh, what a storybook place it was.
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by starfish on March 16, 2008
Cheap Dollars & Large Inventories Mean Vero Beach Bargains for Foreign Buyers
With the U.S. dollar at its weakest level in decades, international buyers are chasing housing bargains in Vero Beach, eager to take advantage of their purchasing power and the declining prices in some of the best-known U.S. cities.
The Washington Post reports “The impact of the weak dollar on foreign demand is one of these market forces that has snuck up on us,” said Jonathan J. Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel, an appraisal company in New York. “It’s been gradually gaining momentum, and the demand has accelerated as the fall in the dollar has accelerated.”
A study last year by the National Association of Realtors confirms that 25 percent of real estate agents surveyed in summer 2007 said they had more business from international clients than they did five years ago. The weak dollar was cited as one of the reasons for the uptick.
About 26 percent of foreign buyers ended up in Florida and another 16 percent in California, with Texas in third place. And more than a quarter of the foreign buyers bought their homes with cash, and when they took out loans, they put down more money than domestic buyers, the study found.
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