It’s Thursday already/finally, so let’s catch up on what’s been going on this week with the Tampa Bay Rays‘ long con:
- Thirty-nine Tampa Bay–area CEOs wrote an open letter declaring the Tampontreal Ex-Rays new-home-stadiums-in-two-countries plan “a win-win-WIN for Tampa Bay, Major League Baseball and Montreal,” something Creative Loafing Tampa Bay marked with a headline I wish I had written: “Tampa rich guys, who benefit from new Rays stadium, sign letter supporting new Rays stadium.” Among the signatories, notes CL Tampa, are Tampa real-estate barons and owners of several restaurants near the proposed stadium site, as well as several major donors to the re-election campaign of Tampa Mayor Jane Castor, who is strongly behind giving Rays owner Stuart Sternberg whatever he wants to stay in Tampa Bay, within reason. The Tampa Bay Times, which published the letter, didn’t mention any of these conflicts of interest in its initial posting, nor in its followup article on the fact that it ran the letter, but then the Times also didn’t mention its own conflict of interest in having taken out a loan from one of the main stadium proponents, so really it all goes hand in hand IN HAND.
- Mayor Castor gave an interview to the Tampa Bay Times on Wednesday in which she said that the Rays leaving Tampa Bay “wouldn’t affect our momentum at all” but also that “it would be a blow for us, for a city, a region as large as ours that is on an incredible trajectory, to lose a major league sporting franchise.” This was a remarkable bit of all-things-for-all-people-ism by Castor, who really specializes in that kind of thing, and who then said that she was “not going to put a dollar amount on” how much she would be willing to spend, plus that “the community’s appetite to pay for a stadium has left the train station,” which likewise seems to be saying two opposite things, but I guess that’s a mayor’s prerogative. (She also called the CEO letter “a step in the right direction,” and no, of course the Times didn’t mention that some of the CEOs signing it were here campaign donors.)
All this is very par for the course with stadium campaigns, but maybe a little less so in Tampa Bay, where getting a local elected official, local business leaders, and the local newspaper all rowing in the same direction has eluded Sternberg for the umpteen years he’s been trying to extract a new stadium. And as Kevin Delaney and Rick Eckstein noted in their excellent book Public Dollars, Private Stadiums, having a strong “growth coalition” of political and business leaders correlates strongly with team owners being able to extract those public dollars quickly and in large quantities, so this is a potentially important step for him. Not as important as finding $700 million or so to pay for a Tampa stadium, plus another $700 million or so to pay for a Montreal stadium, sure — if he’s even serious about his two-city plan and not just using it as a complicated leverage dodge — but it’s a better start that he’s gotten off to before, so just maybe there’s a method to his madness, or least that thing about blind pigs/doves and acorns/peas.
If splitting a team’s season between two cities is good, isn’t three cities even gooder?
As the founder of the campaign to bring the New York Yankees to both Council Bluffs and Tucson, I can categorically state “YES!”
39 CEOs want to keep the Rays in Tampa (sort of).
Too bad they don’t buy tickets… that might be a better way to keep the team than to lobby for public money (that will benefit their own businesses, of course).
Add up the total wealth and annual income of all 39 CEOs… I am willing to bet it’s significantly greater than Sternbergs.
If the almost 40 almost apostles were really interested in keeping the Rays in Tampa, they could just buy them and do that.
Do they know that the cost of a “part-time” stadium is the same as a “full-time” stadium? It’s like buying a new car and only driving it on even numbered days.
I always love the “venue for community events!” sales pitch that somehow ignores all of the venues already available for that sort of thing (in addition to the hockey arena, and the football stadium, and a half dozen spring training ballparks, there’s a 20,000 seat amphitheater about 15 minutes down the road.)
With a 10,000 seat arena in the same complex. Plus there’s another 10,000 seat arena 15 minutes north of downtown at USF and a 10,000 seat arena in Lakeland.
The high volume of doublespeak from corporate tyrants and politicians is amazingly ridiculous to comprehend. This nonsense would never have flown decades ago, at least.
Ya don’t think? Have you read The Power Broker lately?
No, and I don’t care to. I learn quite enough from reading the doublespeak that goes on in all these stadium talks as it is.
Hey Neil,
How would you evaluate the Howard Terminal deal compared to the Nationals, Twins and Marlins stadium deal in terms of how generous they were to the team?
I think the Rays are going to wait until 2024 and see if whatever deal the A’s agree to either with Oakland or Vegas can entice other markets like Nashville or Charlotte to come into the fold and see if they can leverage that to get Tampa to sweeten the pot. We still have 5 years until the use agreement ends and until we get to 3 years they won’t show interest. If the A’s deal is perceived to be better for the city than the deal for the other 3 teams, maybe that gets them off the sidelines?
Other wise batten down the hatches we are in for another 2-3 years of non-story stories from the Rays
“How would you evaluate the Howard Terminal deal compared to the Nationals, Twins and Marlins stadium deal in terms of how generous they were to the team?”
All unhappy stadium deals are unhappy in their own ways.
I don’t expect any A’s deal will play into a Rays deal at all, since that’s not typically how this stuff works. Though “Now that the A’s have a deal, it’s time for Tampa Bay to step up” could certainly be a talking point — sorry, mumbling point — for Rob Manfred.