Lee County officials are adding another step to the process of selecting a Boston Red Sox stadium site. Instead of choosing one site from the nine remaining candidates next week, a county and team selection committee will choose three. The plan will be to negotiate with all three landowners simultaneously to strike the best deal possible.
And competition could be stiff, with one of the landowners upgrading a proposal this week before the selection committee has a chance to vote.
Edison Farms, which owns 4,000 acres immediately east of Interstate 75 in Estero, upped the ante on its offer by promising to make $14 million in road improvements, donate more than 100 acres and set-aside 1,280 acres for conservation.
A news release Thursday did not provide any details on the road upgrades but Edison Farms plans to offer more specifics at an 11 a.m. conference call today.
County officials signed a new 30-year deal with the Red Sox in December. That deal hinges on the construction of a new spring training complex somewhere in south Lee by 2012. The county expects the project to cost from $50 million to $70 million.
When the county advertised for potential sites there was no lack of interest. A field of 16 proposals has been trimmed to nine, and the selection committee will hear final pitches from those nine Feb. 24 and 25.
“I think this puts them in a little bit stronger position,” said Rich Galvano, whose property on the north side of Alico Road is one of the finalists. “I’m sure they want to whittle those numbers down.”
That is the plan. Bob Taylor, a county project manager who’s sitting on the four-member selection committee, said it always was.
“It is different than the normal process we would use,” he said. “But that was always the thought — to pit one against another and enhance our negotiating position.”
Maybe it was, but proposers didn’t know it.
“I think this has been a very fluid process, and I think that’s fine,” said Dougall McCorkle of the Lutgert Cos., whose land on U.S. 41 north of Coconut Point Mall is a finalist. “I don’t think anybody including Lee County knew how the process was going to work.”
“I’ve never seen a county or city acquire property by negotiating with three firms concurrently,” said planner Dan DeLisi, whose client GLevin & SLevin 275 LLC owns land directly west of Southwest Florida International Airport that’s still in the mix.
Typically, the county committee would select three finalists, rank them, and negotiate with the company ranked the highest. If no deal could be struck they’d move on to the second-ranked proposal.