Rays press conference ducks questions about $1.3B stadium plan, looks to break ground next year

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg and St. Petersburg and Pinellas County officials made their official announcement of their stadium plan yesterday, and … oh dear, it’s Marc Topkin writing it up, is it? Well, let’s see if there’s anything useful we can glean from his report:

The financing plan calls for the city and county to split an approximate $600 million public contribution, with the Rays covering the remaining $700 million, plus any cost overruns.

Those agreements with Welch and Pinellas County administrator Barry Burton require approval by the City Council and County Commission, which [Rays president Brian] Auld said they are confident of getting. They hope to break ground around this time next year.

That isn’t much more detail than we had previously, though it does indicate that the total price tag has gone up again, this time by another $100 million, which Sternberg will cover. And nowhere in Topkin’s article — nor in the press conference itself, which I watched — has anyone indicated the answers to a bunch of pressing questions like:

  • If Sternberg will be leasing the stadium site from the public, does that mean he won’t pay property taxes on it?
  • What, if anything, will he pay for the stadium land lease?
  • Who will get the revenues from the surrounding $6 billion development, to be built by Sternberg’s development partner Hines?
  • Is Hines’ reported $105.3 million price for the surrounding land a reasonable fair market value? And will Hines pay property taxes on those parcels?
  • What’s the deal with the reported $130 million in city money for “public site infrastructure,” and who’ll pay cost overruns on that?

There are a lot of moving parts here, and the press conference papered over them as best it could, mostly serving to show how many local elected officials had Rays jerseys in their closets. (Or had them supplied for the occasion by the Rays, I suppose, that’s possible too.) Let’s see if anybody else asked any actual questions, this was a national story, hey New York Daily News, whatcha got?

Rays unveil new stadium renderings, plans for surrounding entertainment district to replace Tropicana Field

Uhh, those are mostly the same renderings from last December. (That at least explains why one includes a fan wearing a jersey of now-under-investigation-for-multiple-accounts-of-sexual-assault-of-minors shortstop Wander Franco.) This one is maybe new:

That’s another from the non-Euclidean geometry series of vaportecture renderings, either depicted as taken via an extreme fish-eye lens or revealing a diamond where the first and third base lines make an angle of much less than 90 degrees. As usual, the fans are extremely excited to wave enormous flags even though the batter has yet to step into the box, with one small child apparently choosing to reenact Leonardo DiCaprio’s “I’m the king of the world!” scene from Titanic, all the better to do so because, like Leo, he’s standing on the edge of a precipitous drop from his perch in what appears to be the fifth deck of seating levels, impressive for a stadium that will only have 30,000 seats. There’s also a giant Rays logo in the batter’s eye in center field, and some kind of glowing roof support superstructure to either side of it, so don’t get too excited, kid, the batter’s not going to be able to see the pitch, let alone hit it.

There’s more bad coverage out there — here’s one that casts this as “the Rays have finally said the magic words that fans have been waiting for years to hear,” those presumably not being “We would like $600 million for a new dome right next to the old one” — but we can skip most of the rest. This was the big PR push, and from Sternberg’s perspective it worked perfectly, even if a few church leaders from the community that was razed to make way for the old stadium remain skeptical that this time it will go any better. Now that that’s done, there should be plenty of time to report on, or even post publicly, the development agreement/memorandum of understanding/actual legislative language so everyone can see the fine print and determine whether it seems worthwhile — there have to be at least a couple of genuine journalists left in the Tampa Bay area, right? Right? Don’t all raise your hands at once…

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13 comments on “Rays press conference ducks questions about $1.3B stadium plan, looks to break ground next year

  1. There was a line from someone (I think it was a city official) who said that fans have two issues: location and outdated design of the trop.

    And how they’re solving one of those!

    But since it will be on the same site, I suppose the other ones gets a shoulder shrug.

    And why not add more seats to a team that is always near the bottom in attendance?

    1. Personally, I won’t feel comfortable with this at all until County Administrator Barry Burton changes his name to Barry Berkman.

      But that’s me.

  2. On a side note, for your weekend update, can we mention how the plans to build a temporary cricket stadium in a public park in NYC were defeated, as they just decided to build the temporary stadium instead in Long Island’s Eisenhower Park, making it their problem.

  3. Citi Field in 2022 dollars would be $1.2 billion with 42,000 seats. Granted it has no roof, but construction cost in NYC is one of the highest in the country if not the highest.

    The A’s and Rays appear to be battling who can be the smallest ballpark for 1.2 – 1.3 dollars. How do you build a new park with only 30,000 seats for that price.

    As for the Rays, I guess the Braves set the practice of build the ballpark village and use the stadium as an excuse to have it. The issue of the Trop being in a bad location is still going to be an issue at the new park. It stands to reason they are looking at duplicating what the Braves did and earn money off of the area around the ballpark and not the park itself.

  4. A 30,000 seat domed stadium on 13 acres (IIRC) of the site.

    So now Fisher just has to figure out how to make the seating tiers even steeper to reduce that to 9 acres or so, and he’s got it made. Oh, also how to pay for it.

    As an aside, when I was a kid I used to draw baseball diamonds as actual diamonds/rhombus’ and not boxes with 90 deg corners as they are supposed to be (well, hey, the CALL them diamonds… so…).

    Relax everyone, by the time construction is started the artists and engineers that will build it will probably be out of elementary school and also be able to draw an actual square box. But we still won’t know who is paying for what, who is paying rent, who is paying property taxes or who gets the redevelopment cash (my guess would be still Sternberg, though they may funnel it through the county’s hands to make it look better first).

  5. It’s a safe bet that the Rays won’t be paying any property taxes on the stadium. As with the Trop, the County will own the land and lease it to the City which makes it tax exempt. Then the City will sublease the stadium to the Rays, who probably will get a fee for operating the facility, not pay rent.

    The property taxes from the surrounding development will be sucked up by the tax increment financing district that includes the stadium, to pay for infrastructure and other stuff (roads, streetscape, utilities, parks, etc.). The City will no doubt pay for any cost overruns.

    Two side notes: I was amazed to see that the facility will be “intentionally designed as a gathering place” for people. Wow! What an innovation! Also, the project may generate a gazillion dollars in property taxes for Pinellas County Schools, but since they are financed on a formula that tries to equalize per-student funding across the state, all that means is that Pinellas will get a smaller cut of sales taxes from the state…which means it will have almost no impact on classrooms.

    On the plus side, Stu kicking in $700 mil is about $550 mil more than I thought he would. Of course, he’s going to try and get that money from “other investors” so maybe it’s not really anything different. But I’m sure Goldman Sachs Stadium will be very nice.

    1. Do we know for sure that there will be a TIF district, or what size it’ll be? I saw Noah Pransky noting this as well, but have no clue if it’s known to be in the agreement or just assuming based on past handwaving.

      1. I haven’t checked lately, but historically the Trop site has been in the “Intown West” TIF (which is right next to the “Intown TIF” and “South St Pete TIF” which cover about a third of the city (don’t get me started). So there are already 3 TIFs that they could use…or set up a whole new one, what the heck.

        1. Sorry, I should have looked at the maps first…most of the Trop site is (currently) in the “Intown TIF” which includes all of downtown from there to the waterfront.

  6. The trop site will continue to be in a TIF. The city will borrow and float bonds based upon future property tax revenue. Bonds are not a source of revenue but rather a loan.
    The Hines company is buying the 70 acres so it follows that they will get the revenue from the development. In the previous agreement, the Rays would get half of the redevelopment revenue. This is a significant difference.

    1. So where does the TIF money go? Would any of it be used to provide infrastructure or other improvements for the Rays project? Or would it all go into a pool for the overall TIF district?

      We really need to see the fine print here, already.

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