ST. PETERSBURG — For the first time in years, it appears the Tampa Bay Rays have had serious talks with the city about potentially building a new stadium on the Tropicana Field site.
But St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman said the team’s increased demands for the property’s development rights and its insistence on the split-season plan with Montreal have the two sides at a standstill.
“I want the Rays to remain in St. Petersburg and I’m willing to work with them to make it happen,” Kriseman told the Tampa Bay Times. “But I’m not giving the city away.”
Any stalemate in negotiations could lessen the chances of the Rays remaining in Tampa Bay once their current use agreement for the domed stadium expires after the 2027 season, and could also delay the city’s development of the property.
The Tropicana Field land is considered a community-defining parcel with 86 acres available for development in the shadow of St. Pete’s growing downtown. The city recently received proposals from seven developers — with and without a new stadium on the land — and revealed details during a Tuesday morning press conference at Tropicana Field.
While Kriseman has long insisted that the Rays would eventually acknowledge the Tropicana Field site as the most logical place for a new stadium, team executives have expressed little interest in remaining at that location. In the past, the Rays have left the Trop site on the table for a new stadium but have indicated repeatedly that it was not their preference.
Kriseman said the two sides had initial talks about that land last summer, and then met several times after the Rays finished playing in the World Series in late October.
The current use agreement at Tropicana Field entitles the Rays to half the revenue generated by any redevelopment of that land until the lease expires at the end of the 2027 baseball season. In their most recent discussions, Kriseman said the team asked for a larger portion of the revenue and more control of the development.
The Rays are seeking control of 50 acres east of Booker Creek, and want 100 percent of the development rights for that portion of the parcel, according to Kriseman. The team would still be entitled to 50 percent of the development rights on the rest of the property.
Those 50 acres would include 14 acres of required park land plus 10 or 11 acres for the stadium. That would leave about 25 acres for the Rays to develop any way they wanted, while presumably using the revenue to help fund the cost of the stadium. Kriseman said the team would still likely seek other public funding sources to pay for stadium construction.
“Right now, they’re entitled to 50 percent of the proceeds and that’s with a full-time team in the city,” Kriseman said. “And they’re proposing to take 100 percent of the proceeds for a large part of that land, and 50 percent for the rest of it. And that’s for a part-time team.
“I can’t give them that. I just can’t.”
In the summer of 2019, Rays owner Stu Sternberg unveiled an innovative plan for the team to play slightly less than half of its regular-season games in Tampa Bay while playing the rest in Montreal. His basic point was that neither market had shown the ability to financially support a Major League team full time, but could thrive under this sister city concept.
Kriseman said the revenues from redevelopment are not the only issue with the team’s proposal. When the stadium was originally approved in the mid-1980s, it was supposed to serve as a catalyst for low-income communities nearby. The financial windfall was never fully realized even though dozens of Black families had been forced to relocate to make way for the stadium.
The new redevelopment project would be a way to readdress those wrongs, and city leaders have promised to listen to the community’s desires. By turning over half of the available property to the Rays, Kriseman said the city would forfeit its ability to integrate low-income housing throughout the parcel, as well as choosing development that could lead to higher-paying jobs in the area.
Agreeing to this plan would also mean asking developers to resubmit their proposals for the site since the city would only control 36 acres of the parcel.
“It undermines the entire process of what we’ve been trying to do out there,” Kriseman said.
It’s still not entirely clear whether the city can proceed with its plans without approval from the Rays. While the use agreement ties the team to Tropicana Field through 2027, it also gives the Rays the right to reject unreasonable requests to build on that land.
While the city contends that any redevelopment could begin without disrupting baseball operations on the land, the Rays could conceivably make it difficult by taking the issue to court. There’s also the question of whether it makes more sense to wipe the slate clean by razing Tropicana Field and building all at once, instead of trying to do it piecemeal around an existing stadium.
The Rays have previously proposed two full-season stadium projects in Tampa Bay, but neither idea ever got beyond an architect’s renderings.
The first was an open-air stadium at the current site of Al Lang Field that Sternberg announced in 2007. That proposal, much like the one currently under discussion, would have been funded with revenues from the sale of the Tropicana Field land. The then-$450 million stadium would have required voter approval since it involved building on St. Petersburg’s waterfront, and the Rays abandoned the idea seven months later when the referendum met resistance.
With attendance in St. Petersburg continuing to lag as the team performed better on the field, the Rays shifted attention to Hillsborough County. Given a three-year window by Kriseman and the City Council to negotiate elsewhere in Tampa Bay, the Rays settled on a plan in 2018 to build a translucent roof stadium in Ybor City. That plan died months later when it was clear the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County were not willing to pay a substantial portion of the nearly $1 billion cost, and the team struggled to attract corporate support.
Since the collapse of the Ybor City stadium deal, the Rays say they have been focused on building two boutique-style stadiums — one in the Tampa Bay area and the other in Montreal.
Under that plan, the Rays would leave St. Pete before the rainy season and before the heat becomes unbearable, so a new stadium would not require a roof and, thus, would be less expensive to build.
The Rays have business partners with preliminary plans to build a stadium with private funds in Montreal, but the team’s use agreement does not allow for discussions of any games played elsewhere before the 2028 season. The Montreal group says it will not consider building a stadium until it has a contract guaranteeing the Rays are coming.
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Mayor says Tampa Bay Rays want too much to build stadium at Tropicana site - Tampa Bay Times
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