Sarasota, Fla. -- The route to Ed Smith Stadium is dotted with distractions. There is the Ringling Museum of Art, the Mote Aquarium, a greyhound track and, of course, the glistening, white-sand beaches that stretch the length of Florida's Gulf Coast.
So, if you're looking for a major decline in tourism because of the baseball strike, you've come to the wrong place.
"There has been only a minuscule negative impact on tourism in the Sarasota area," said Larry Marthaler, executive director of the Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau, "because there are so many other reasons to spend your winter vacation here."
That opinion may not be shared by every Florida community -- many of which depend far more heavily on spring training to generate tourist revenue -- but it leaves room to wonder if the "regional economic crisis" the baseball strike supposedly has caused in Florida and Arizona is more of a political creation than a serious problem.
Don't misunderstand. The labor dispute will have a significant impact on a number of communities, especially those that have built expensive spring training complexes on the premise that March revenues will help pay for them. There also will be a negative trickle-down effect on local charities that benefit from concession and parking tie-ins.
Exhibition crowds figure to be smaller if Major League Baseball goes through with its plan to play the Grapefruit and Cactus league schedules with replacement players and minor-league talent, but the overall impact on Florida tourism apparently has been exaggerated by opportunistic politicians and strike-weary baseball fans.
Marthaler cites a study done in 1987 by the Florida Department of Commerce that showed spring training is largely a peripheral Florida tourist attraction. The study indicated that about 8,000 tourists a year come to Florida exclusively for the purpose of seeing a spring training game. That's a small percentage of the visitors who come south.
Sarasota isn't hurting. Neither is Tampa/St. Petersburg, an area so large that 30 exhibition dates at Al Lang Stadium (capacity 7,227) isn't going to make a blip on the economic radar screen. The combined ticket revenues generated by the Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals would total about $1 million in a normal exhibition season, but only a small fraction of that goes to the city of St. Petersburg and only a fraction of that will be lost because of flagging attendance.
There are communities, however, that will feel the pinch more dramatically. Plant City was known only for its annual strawberry festival until it built a spring training complex for the Cincinnati Reds. Nearby Lakeland lives for its annual visit from the Detroit Tigers. If it is true that spring training generates $6 million to $9 million in economic activity for a host community, a downturn in outside interest could strain the local economy.
"There are communities that are landlocked where major-league baseball spring training is a much more visible reason to come to that part of Florida," Marthaler said.
But even some of those say the overall impact of the labor dispute has been overblown. In Winter Haven, spring home of the Cleveland Indians, hotels and restaurants are bracing for a 25-50 percent drop in March revenues, but the area is a popular crossroads for other tourists.
"We're in a pretty good location," said Joyce Davis, who is with the Winter Haven Chamber of Commerce. "Certainly the Indians are important to us, but that's icing on the cake. We have Cypress Gardens nearby, which draws a million visitors a year, ++ and one can come here and be at Disney World in less than an hour or be at the beach on either coast in two hours.
"This community will have some suffering [with the strike], but it's not going to dry up and blow away."
The biggest victims will be individual businesses located close to spring training stadiums. Restaurants and hotels that adjoin exhibition sites generally flourish in March. If the games go on, they'll still do business, but the downturn in advance ticket sales -- which has been significant in most locations -- signals a certain drop in revenues.
"We're usually 97 percent advance sold by this time," said Victor Vongs, general manager of the Sheraton Harborplace in Fort Myers, the headquarters hotel for the Boston Red Sox. "It looks like we're going to be down about 3,000 room nights. We're trying to make that up with some special promotions. If that doesn't work, we may have to consider some layoffs next month.
"It makes a big difference, having Roger Clemens walking through in your lobby."
Fort Myers is one of the areas that figures to be hit the hardest, partly because it is a relatively small metropolitan area that has two teams and, perhaps more importantly, because it has a new spring training complex to pay off.
The city receives $1 for every ticket sold to a Red Sox game at City of Palms Park, which in a normal year would net Fort Myers about $200,000 in ticket revenue. That may be cut in half this year, so some recreation programs could be affected.
"It may sound like a small amount," said Nancy Campbell, director of parks and recreation and stadium operations for the city of Fort Myers, "but if you add up everything -- gate receipts, parking, the tourist bed tax -- we're looking at $1 million. We're a city of 52,000, so that's significant."
The stadium bonds are covered by the fee that the Red Sox pay for their training complex, but the ticket revenues help pay for year-round activities at the stadium as well as additional debt retirement. Lee County faces separate and similar losses if attendance is down sharply for Minnesota Twins home games.
"We're running at about 60 percent of last year," said John Yarbrough, director of parks and recreation for Lee County, "but in our contract we get $200,000 rent from the Twins no matter who is in uniform. The amount of money we're losing is small, but that's not the big nut. The big thing is the overall economic impact, and we probably won't know that until April."
Orioles impact?
The decision by the Orioles not to play in games against teams with replacement players could have a dramatic effect on stadium revenues in St. Petersburg, but the impact will be subtle if the games are played with minor-league talent.
Figures compiled by the U.S. Conference of Mayors show that Al Lang Stadium would receive about $10,000 per game from the Orioles for a total of 15 games there. That figure will drop with only minor-leaguers in uniform, but not enough to cause any significant shortfall.
Every team -- with the possible exception of the Orioles -- is expected to fulfill its spring schedule, which may satisfy single-game vacationers who didn't come to Florida primarily to watch spring baseball.