Following an Osceola County Commission decision Monday, the ball is now in the Harmony Development Company’s court to produce additional overnight tourist stays in the county using $7.5 million in tourist development tax revenue as seed money for a new amateur sports facility in Harmony. That facility will have eight ball fields and related amenities.

Harmony Development – after about six months of proposal changes due to falling tourist development taxes and funding being allocated to other projects – finally landed the proposal on a unanimous vote from the commission. County staff had recommended the Harmony proposal as the only one that was workable using the funding available. We’d have to agree and we wish Harmony the best of luck.

Like several commissioners said, we don’t believe a sports facility on the east side of the county is the ideal place because it will not help hotels in the West U.S. Highway 192 corridor, where the need is greatest. However, any additional lodging tax revenue generated by overnight stays in the county certainly could help fund future projects that might be in the main tourist corridor – or at least closer to it.

We’re sure that the Harmony Development Company is looking at the ball fields project as a way to drive other development to the community when the time is right, such as retail or a future hotel, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Retail businesses also would help attract homebuyers to that community.

Like Commissioner Ken Smith, we also would like to see an agreement negotiated with Harmony so that there are guarantees that a certain portion of room nights generated by the sports facility would be required to be in our county. We don’t want overnight stays to be at lodging businesses in Brevard County to the east where it might actually be quicker to get to than hotels on West U.S. Highway 192.

All in all, we are happy that the awarding of the ball fields proposal has finally taken place. However, as we have said before, this proposal was backward from the beginning. It started out with twice the number of ball fields and an indoor sports facility on 150-plus acres (that the county would buy) that would accommodate games organized through the United States Specialty Sports Association. It then morphed several times into what we have now, with no mention of the association, as it should be, since that group apparently was unwilling or unable to invest in the project.