The Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team has played at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg since 1998. It's a cozy, indoor park that players and fans hate.
The players hate it because of the low-hanging catwalks that interfere with fly balls, dingy lighting, and artificial turf-like concrete. The attendance at Tropicana has been awful with an average of just 16,500 per game in 2024. The team made the playoffs in 2023, and their home wild-card game attracted just 19,700. That's the lowest attendance at a major league playoff game in more than 100 years.
In what might have seemed a small mercy. the field was given a once-over by Hurricane Milton, which ripped through the stadium causing extensive damage.
From @TheAthletic: Tropicana Field, home to the Tampa Bay Rays, sustained significant damage to its roof as Hurricane Milton descended upon St. Petersburg, Florida, and the surrounding area. It was built to withstand winds of up to 115 miles per hour. pic.twitter.com/qlZUAzIFT3
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 10, 2024
The damage won't be repaired this season, so the Rays will play at the New York Yankees 11,000-seat spring training facility in Tampa. But the biggest problem has nothing to do with Tropicana Field. The Rays want to build a $1.3 billion, 30,000-seat stadium as part of a downtown development project in a mostly black neighborhood.
The Pinellas County Commission who must sign off on the new stadium, decided to delay a critical vote on whether to issue bonds to cover a significant part of the funding for the facility.
That has team ownership in panic mode.
“The Rays organization is saddened and stunned by this unfortunate turn of events,” co-presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman said in a letter sent to the Commission. They pointed out that the project had been approved by the city of St. Petersburg and the County Commission.
“As we have made clear at every step of this process, a 2029 ballpark delivery would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone,” the letter added.
Major League Baseball in Tampa-St. Petersburg has been on life support from the start. It's unclear whether the franchise can survive without the new stadium.
The commission, which now includes two newly elected members, voted Tuesday to delay consideration of the financing bonds until its Dec. 17 meeting.
“This is a big deal. I’m not an anti-stadium person. I just want to make sure we’re getting the deal done and it’s fair,” said Commissioner Dave Eggers.
That leaves the Rays’ future in St. Petersburg in limbo.
“We know we’re going to be in Steinbrenner in 2025 and we don’t know much beyond that,” Auld said in an interview.
The dubious justification for multi-billionaires able to tap taxpayers to build these playgrounds is wearing thin. Sure, the franchises bring in tens of millions of dollars in tax revenue every year. But the initial outlay of more than a billion dollars doesn't add up.
Once the new stadium is built, Tropicana will be destroyed. It will cost $55 million to repair the facility. But the political pressure to make the new ballpark the centerpiece of urban renewal means that the bonds will probably be issued and the new park will be built.
Under the original plan, Pinellas County would spend about $312.5 million for the new ballpark and the city of St. Petersburg around $417 million including infrastructure improvements. The Rays and their partner, the Hines development company, would cover the remaining costs including any overruns.
It isn’t just baseball that is affected. The new Rays ballpark is part of a larger urban renovation project known as the Historic Gas Plant District, which refers to a predominantly Black neighborhood that was forced out by construction of Tropicana Field and an interstate highway spur.
You had to know that "social justice" would be part of the picture from the start.
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