ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — After years of talks, a deal for the Rays new ballpark was signed this summer, a $1.3 billion dollar stadium to go along with a massive development plan for St. Pete’s Gas Plant District.
But now, confidence in that deal coming together appears shaken.
Pinellas County leaders are scheduled to vote on approving the bonds to help pay for the stadium tomorrow, but they’ve already delayed the vote once.
That led Rays owner Stu Sternberg to tell the Tampa Bay Times, “That action sent a clear message that we had lost the county as a partner.”
He also told the Times, “The future of baseball in Tampa Bay became less certain after that vote.”
Michael Loritz has written about the Rays stadium issues for years and says unless there’s a backdoor deal happening, the best option for everyone is for the team to stay in St. Pete.
“I hate for it to be a showdown of some sort because we’ve already figured this out. We’ve already figured out where the money is going. The new stadium, we were all really happy from July to about September of this year. And we were walking on cloud nine and it dissipated. We all kind of fell down to earth real hard,” said Loritz.
Ron Diner is heading up HomerunsMatter.com and wrote Pinellas County Commissioners, urging them to vote no to approving the bonds. He wants the St. Pete City Council to reject the deal as well.
“The city has produced a report that says it has $6 billion of needed sewer and stormwater repairs, and repairs to the sea walls. The city cannot afford to give away all this money to build a stadium, which is not important. It’s nice but not important and also protect us from the next storm,” said Diner.
Some leaders are souring on the deal after the Rays chose to play in Tampa next season instead of a stadium in Pinellas County.
Others weren’t on board to begin with. There’s also the unsettled matter of whether or not to spend tens of millions to repair Tropicana Field.
The Rays just released pictures from inside.
You can see just had badly damaged the stadium was after the roof ripped off during Hurricane Milton.
Everything from the field to the stands, to the concessions and offices.
“I’m sure they are walking around with hardhats because something might fall. It is so bad in Tropicana Field right now. It’s just a disaster and it’s going to take a lot of money to fix it,” said Loritz.
Back in 2018, the Rays thought they had a plan for a new stadium in Ybor City.
Sternberg told me then that he was very excited about it. “This is a very complicated issue. What’s the timeline,” I asked him.
“We have something in my head and it’s just a gray area. My whole head is probably a gray area after what we’ve been through. We’d like to see an opening pitch in 2023,” Sternberg said.
