GAA clubs at an extraordinary general meeting of the Kerry County Board have voted to endorse a proposal to move the town's Austin Stack grounds to purpose-built grounds on the Tralee racetrack at Ballybeggan.
The current GAA stadium will be turned into a multi-million euro shopping centre.
However, Eddie Barrett, local auctioneer and the grandnephew of Austin Stack after whom the stadium is named, has criticised the move, saying an in-town sports facility will now be lost to Tralee.
"I resent the GAA's moving an in-town stadium of its character and history out of town into what was our racecourse," Mr Barrett said. "The county board would rather have shops there than an in-town sports facility."
The park alongside the town's train and bus stations had a long history as a sports ground and was once a cricket ground. It was given to the town by the British army, Mr Barrett added. There would no longer be a "match day buzz" around Tralee and restaurants and pubs would also lose out as a result of the proposal.
An egm of the Tralee racecourse in September has already endorsed a sale of the racecourse to the developers involved in the Austin Stack proposal - John Casey and Séamus O'Halloran.
Their plans are to see the Austin Stack park and the nearby Mitchel's club grounds turned into a shopping centre and in turn a 15,000 capacity stadium and pitch will be built at Ballybeggan.
There is also to be a 30-acre training centre in mid-Kerry for the GAA.
However, a long history of racing in Tralee (Ballybeggan itself was a deer park owned by the "Liberator" Daniel O'Connell), which goes back to 1767, will end under the proposal.
The chairman of the county board Seán Walsh welcomed the decision. The county board, which has been seeking state-of the art training grounds and facilities for some years, had looked at a number of sites and believed this proposal was the best option.
Planning applications for the various proposals are to be lodged shortly and it is expected the new stadium will be ready in 2010.