The St. Pete Catalyst has got its hands on a report by economic consultants AECOM and builders Skanska on the cost of a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium in Tampa, and it says the team is looking at spending $798.9 million for a 23,000-seat, open-air stadium. (Another 4,000 fans could stand or sit on a grass berm.) This would make it the third-most-expensive MLB stadium ever built, for the smallest-capacity new MLB stadium since, hmm, looks like Cincinnati’s original Crosley Field in 1912.
Except that $798.9 million figure isn’t actually the full total, says the Catalyst, which reports that it “does not include all the costs associated with the county, city and additional parties.” (No details on what this means, and the Catalyst didn’t deign to link to the full study.) Plus, this report seems to have been commissioned back before the Tampontreal Ex-Rays plan was struck down by MLB, so presumably Rays owner Stuart Sternberg might want a bit schmancier digs if he’s going to make it his team’s full-time home, which would mean an even higher price tag.
The AECOM report also included an economic-impact projection from Rays-hired consultants Brailsford and Dunlavey, but honestly given that 1) the Catalyst didn’t include that part of the report either and 2) economic-impact projections from team-hired consultants generally can’t be trusted as far as you can throw them, it’s not even worth discussing the alleged numbers. The main takeaway here is that building a Rays stadium to meet Sternberg’s specifications is going to be super-expensive, which makes it understandable that he doesn’t want to pay for all of it, but $800 million still seems a lot to spend just to move the Rays across the bay and eliminate a lot of the seats — maybe it would be cheaper for all involved to buy Rays fans a ferry service? Just a thought.
The write-up also mentioned, with zero references, about how “If the Rays were to relocate to Tampa, the move would create an astronomical economic impact.”
Which, lol no it wouldn’t… what the move will actually do is take all of the spending by the locals and out-of-towners in St Pete and shift it over to Tampa’s side of the bay; no new wealth is being generated in the region. Not to mention that the reported stadium capacity is far too small (10,000+ less than Miami’s new ballpark, even) for any resulting impact to be more than negligible, let alone “astronomical.”
It’s hard not to think this is due diligence in preparation for a move out of Tampa-St. Pete.
Not saying 24k is too small a size for mid-market MLB; not saying open air in Tampa is a complete dealbreaker… but it just seems like this is the type of thing you’d publicize in order to get a firm “no”, and thus justification for building essentially the same stadium in another market.
Ben while I rarely agree with you, on this I don’t disagree but where?
Montreal or Nashville most likely. I’d give Charlotte an outside shot if the first 2 didn’t pan out.
Those aren’t really better options unless they offer more public money, which they might.
I had never been to Crosley Field but the pictures make it look nice.
It was.
Will there be a Personal Standing License involved for the Berm fans?
In the middle ages, it was relatively common for conflicts to include at least one period of truce where a negotiated settlement was offered to one side terms of which included the payment of vast sums of gold and the severed head of the opposing side arrayed in a basket of melons.
As Ben notes above, if this were an actual proposal (which is seems it is not, at least yet) it’s hard not to see it as one designed to be utterly unacceptable by the other side.
Is it too soon to mention again that the former Legends can be upgraded to meet the Rays actual needs for somewhere between $50-100m?
23,000 seats and open air. Who would have ever thought that an MLB stadium would be almost as small as an NHL or NBA Arena? Open Air in the summer in Florida. Fans are really going to flock to a hot and humid ballpark in July and August. Isn’t that the reason Texas need a new domed ballpark because the nice one they already had was too hot and humid for fans in the summer? All for more than it cost to build Citi Field, at 42,000 seats.
It’s not even just the heat, half the games will be rained out
According to Forbes, the Rays are worth $1 billion (29th-out-of-30 MLB teams). Why in the hell would anyone give them $800m and untold millions more for a new stadium and extras? You’re better off buying the team or telling the Rays to go pound sand. Is the lack of common sense endemic amongst elected officials? Yes, a rhetorical question.
Considering the value of the Rays, you’d think a $300-400 million stadium seems more appropriate and feasible. I don’t know where the hell they came up with $800 million.
For what would be the smallest ballpark in the majors with no roof, and you know there will be cost overruns, it will probably be closer to a billion.
If you built Shea Stadium today, it would be close to $250-$300 million dollars in today’s dollars. For what the Rays want, take out 30,000 seats, (Shea was 55,000), for a 25,000 seat ball park. That money you save by not needing the extra decks and 30,000 seats you can have all the feature comforts of most MLB parks today. Even if cost twice as much. $500-600 million, I still don’t see how they get to over $800 million.
Just because they think someone else will pay for it. They probably don’t even know HOW they are going to spend that much money on such a small stadium. Anything left over they can always pay themselves as consulting fees on their own project.
In the same way players’ agents counsel them to take as much as they can get regardless (because they are somehow “hurting” the next player up in FA if they don’t), owners tell their fellow club members that the price must only ever go up… no matter what your actual needs or the wealth of your fan base, you must build all the ridiculous things the rest have or you are letting the team down.
At some point we will, as a society, begin saying no to these kinds of things. The trouble is, I don’t know if that will be before the catastrophic collapse or after.
I really don’t think that a player agent advising a client to get the most money possible from owners is the same as owners telling other owners to get as much money possible from governmental entities.
Don’t know if this fits the definition of false equivalency, but it may.
Way too much money to spend on something that is, at its core, a form of entertainment. The greed of baseball’s politics…
Isn’t that a rather large capacity for Tampa baseball stadium?
This might be extreme, but I expect this is the direction ballparks – and perhaps all kinds of public entertainment venues – are headed – fewer total seats, but more money spent per seat.
People just have so many other things to do, including watching sports on TV, and their attention span is dwindling.
Neil has been suggesting this for some time.
Owners will tell you that the “cheap seats” they build (not that any are truly cheap in the modern era) don’t generate much in the way of revenue and therefore are not worth building… unless you are using someone else’s money, of course.
I agree that the next generation of facilities will, by and large, have lower capacities again (as the last generation tended to also). Having 60-65k seats for an NFL stadium reduces demand on amenities significantly from a 90k stadium like the former Fedex field.
For the average fan who still likes to go to games, this is not good news of course. One of the side benefits of lower capacities for owners is higher prices.
In the end, the middle class taxpayers who foot the bill for these things will be priced out (and will have to pay to watch the games in their own living rooms on their own tvs).
This is the modern professional sports model. It hasn’t been the entertainment of the masses for some time. I expect it to polarize even further, not ease, over the next 20-30 years.
Construction costs have soared since the pandemic started. That is why it is so expensive.
Why that $799 million number was thrown out doesn’t make sense. It does not include the roof which would be needed from early May till early October. This pushes the number close to $1 billion. And construction would be at least two years away taking up to 4 years to build. Simple inflation will spike those numbers too. Stu may vary we’ll end up in St Pete because they have the money while Tampa has failed on this before for a similar amount of money.