The former spring home of the Houston Astros and Florida Marlins is once again on the market, as the old Cocoa Stadium complex in Florida’s Brevard County is for sale.
The Astros began life as the Houston Colt .45s and trained in Arizona’s Geronimo Junction. When the team went through a rebranding after the opening of the Astrodome in 1965, the team shifted spring operations to Cocoa Stadium in rural Brevard County and built a training complex from scratch, complete with a 4,200-seat ballpark, four training fields and a player dorm.
The facility did not age well, and by 1980 the team sought upgrades from the complex’s owner, the city of Cocoa, even to the point of offering to buy the ballpark and complex. But those negotiations fell through, and the team ended up moving spring operations to the Orlando suburb of Kissimmee beginning in 1985. When the Florida Marlins ended the National League in 1993, the team needed a temporary spring-training complex while Space Coast Stadium was under construction, so the Cocoa Stadium complex was pressed into MLB service one last time, by then rebranded as Cocoa Expo.
Like many former spring-training complexes, Cocoa Expo was converted into a site for youth baseball and later expanded in 2015 to support multiple sports, including softball, soccer, gymnastics, football and basketball. But it faced severe financial issues and more than one bankruptcy, and the Launch Pad Sports Complex (as it’s currently being marketed) ended up being repossessed by Bank of Washington in September 2020, which is offering the complex either as a turnkey sports destination or for redevelopment; the location on I-95 and SR 520 provides plenty of exposure and access. You can check out the full description of the 48-acre site on LoopNet, as shown below.
There’s no branding or anything marking the days when the ballpark served as the Astros’ training complex; the ballpark has been renovated since our our first visit there 20 years ago, with a new brighter color scheme replacing the old green seats and paint. And the location is certainly convenient. But it would need to upgraded to compete with the new breed of youth sport complexes in Florida. Take a look at what comprises the new Chain of Lakes Park in Lakeland, where the old Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians spring complex was torn down and replaced with a state-of-the-art facility, complex with plenty of batting cages, pitching cages, shaded areas and a sea of synthetic turf.
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