Major League Baseball

Green Monster at new Red Sox spring home

Published Feb. 25, 2010 9:35 p.m. ET

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The future spring training home of the Boston Red Sox will have a replica Green Monster and duplicate the dimensions of Fenway Park.

The Red Sox, Lee County and Populous released preliminary renderings Thursday of the 11,000-capacity, $75 million ballpark, which is scheduled to open in 2012 about 10 miles from the current stadium. Five practice fields will be outside the main stadium, combining training camp for the Red Sox into one facility from the current two.

The Green Monster will have a manual scoreboard and seats atop the wall, which will be 310 feet from home plate down the line. The right-field fence will be 302 feet from the plate, and the bullpens will be beyond the fence in right-center, just as they are at Fenway.

Boston's spring training clubhouse will be 50,000 square feet clubhouse. The seating capacity will be up from 7,575 at City of Palms, the team's current spring home near downtown Fort Myers.

``It's still a work in progress so people shouldn't leap to conclusions about it,'' Red Sox president Larry Lucchino said. ``I like the Fenway similarity. The charm of Fenway Park. The Florida look and feel. Not a duplicate of Fenway Park with heavy red brick and New England style. It's meant to be different and lighter and airier and breezier and more Florida-like.''

A name for the new park, with potential corporate sponsorship, has not been determined yet. There are plans for a mixed-use, 20-acre site next to the complex. The Red Sox are buying that parcel for an estimated $5 million.

``I think that's a ways away.'' Lucchino said of plans for that parcel. ``I think the ballpark and the complex are sort of the central focus here and you get that done and make that work and you do compatible things around it rather than putting the cart before the horse.''

The Red Sox have been in Fort Myers since 1993 and will start a new 30-year-lease when the ballpark opens.