The slow news drip about the Tampa Bay Rays stadium situation continues: On Thursday night, the St. Petersburg city council “reluctantly” agreed to spend $6 million on setting up a temporary drainage system at Tropicana Field and waterproofing some interior areas to keep damage from worsening at the stadium, whose roof was torn off in Hurricane Milton. The headline the Tampa Bay Times put on this is “St. Pete is betting millions that Tropicana Field can be salvaged,” but that’s a little misleading — the council actually approved the $6 million expense because the city’s insurance coverage includes a line requiring it to “take reasonable steps to protect any covered property from future damages,” and St. Pete officials were concerned that if they didn’t spend this money, their insurer could refuse to pay out entirely.
The Times’ John Romano goes on to report:
“I would not be here before you today asking to do this if I had any indication, at this moment, that there were serious, significant structural problems at the stadium,” said city administrator Rob Gerdes. “Now, it’s a fluid situation. Something could change, but we’re here because we believe that that’s most likely.”
The city’s position is understandable. With three years remaining on the Trop’s use agreement, St. Pete is responsible for providing the Rays a major league-quality facility. Should Tropicana be unusable the city would be in breach of the use agreement, and the team theoretically could seek damages for revenues lost and costs incurred in moving to a smaller stadium.
That “theoretically” is doing a lot of work there: As was covered here last week, the Rays’ lease only requires the city to use insurance proceeds to pay for stadium repairs, and the St. Pete council actually lowered its wind and flood insurance coverage on the stadium last March, even as councilmembers questioned whether it would be enough to cover damage to the Trop’s aging roof. If the Rays can’t play at their current home, the city is required to “reasonably assist the club in finding a substitute location for playing Home Games,” using money from an existing repair fund — or fronting the money and getting repaid out of future repair fund proceeds, which could be tricky if the lease that establishes the repair fund only continues for another three years.
At this point, the city is looking at paying out a $22 million deductible for any repairs, at which point it will be eligible to collect $25 million in insurance money, assuming its insurer doesn’t challenge the claim. After that, said city administrator Rob Gerdes, the city could ask FEMA to cover additional costs; the federal agency “has notified us it’s an eligible project,” he said, but there’s no indication yet of whether federal funds will be available for its repair.
Obviously, a ton is riding here on how much it would cost to repair the dome, which is still a work in progress. (Ordering new fabric would only cost about $7 million, assuming that much can be found on short notice, but then there’s still the cost of installing it and doing any other needed repairs to, say, the support structure.) This looks like it will come down to deciding whether it’s cheaper for the city to spend the $22 million deductible and whatever added costs FEMA doesn’t cover on repairing a stadium that’s only set to last another three years anyway, or risk Rays owner Stu Sternberg trying to present taxpayers with a bill for upgrading a temporary home elsewhere — all amid the wild card of county leaders possibly holding up bond approval for a new stadium until Sternberg promises to stay in Pinellas County. It’s gamesmanship all the way down, and we should start to learn more once the engineers present a repair price tag — even MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has no clue when that might be, so I’m sure not going to venture a guess.
The county’s situation here is not that different from an ordinary homeowner (in this case, with a tenant residing).
If the wind carries some wood or metal sheeting straight through your front window, or tears off your shingles/tiles/tin roof, you will be covered for that damage. You probably will not be covered for any damage arising from you failing to patch the open hole in your house or ongoing water damage from the missing roofing.
Property owners are all required to take reasonable steps to minimize post incident damage.
In the case of Milton/Helene, the county might be able to argue that immediate repairs/temporary protection was not possible given the level of damage to both the stadium and surrounding areas (not sure what the immediate area around the facility was like after the storms), but certainly leaving it open to the elements for months or years is not going to be acceptable to the insurer(s).
There may even be “well, you are tearing it down in three years anyway, let’s talk about options” discussions going on behind the scenes. But if the insurer’s limit is $25m… they aren’t going to be all that motivated to make a generous settlement – particularly given the fact that they have $22m in deductible coming (wow! what a policy!). It would be interesting to know if the Rays carry their own insurance for damage as well (it would be prudent, given the limits the county has).
It’s worth remembering that if your house is severely damaged by a storm or accident and you choose not to rebuild in kind, you do not get a payout of the replacement value of your home, but something akin to the commuted market value, less land costs etc.
With insurers, it’s always a negotiation.
FEMA should NOT pay for this!
Argh!!!
One would think that FEMA has other more pressing priorities… agreed.
There are, after all, poor people without housing at all… and people who used to live in their cars who no longer have cars.
At some point I think it is worth asking “who are we, anyway?”
Do we really want to know the answer?
Rafael is coming, strike three, the Rays are out of a home for 3 years. With another hurricane lurking in the Gulf that might pass close to Tampa Bay, more damage could be on the way. Homeowners should start screaming now if FEMA money is used for a billionaire’s stadium while grandma who is living on Social Security is having a hard time getting her house repaired.
Rafael isn’t headed anywhere near Tampa Bay:
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/theadvocate.com/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/6/04/604d2a80-f4df-5afd-b17c-5ca24245d813/67293f4a6df37.image.png?resize=897%2C736
The area is expected to get rain for about two consecutive days… the stadium is by and large exposed because the waterproofing, just approved, is not anywhere near complete.
The best option is to make a deal with the insurance company and use the money to upgrade Al Lang Field. For a small percentage of the cost and completely of repairing Tropicana Field, 5000 temporary seats can be added , along with concession and lockerroom improvements. 12,000 seats should be adequate, given Ray’s attendance and the Ray’s get to stay in downtown St. Petersburg.
There’s zero room in the Al Lang footprint for even 500 extra temporary seats, let alone 5,000. They can add the rest of the stuff in theory, but there’s also really no point in adding any sort of bells and whistles to an obviously temporary venue.
Pinellas County should really let the Rays be someone else’s problem, at least in the short term — and maybe even longer-term, if it were to somehow come to that.
There’s a reason the Rays don’t spring train there anymore, despite the fact that the old St. Pete Baseball Commission no longer exists and the Rays effectively control Al Lang through the Rowdies. And why the proposal to revive MLS in Tampa at Al Lang fell through. And why the Sail stadium proposal at the Al Lang site fell through.
This may sound like a stupid question, but if they decided to just implode the Trop and play elsewhere for now. Could the new stadium be ready sooner?
I’ve been wondering that too.
My guess (and it’s only that) would be that the mobilization/hiring and prep work (mainly office work) for things like RFPs and EOIs for the actual work (you know, stuff beyond the vapourtecture) have not yet started. Assuming that is the case, it might be difficult to speed things up much.
Maybe a few months earlier? But I would think shaving a year or even 8 months off of the opening date would be practically impossible.
Pretty sure that wouldn’t speed things up much, as the new stadium isn’t directly on the Trop site.
Three years from breaking ground to opening is pretty standard for these things.
Even though its not right on the footprint of the Trop it is on the site, I would think not having an active stadium right next to wear they are building would slow things down. Also, Raymond James was built in 23 months and Globe Life Field in about 30. So if it was fast tracked maybe they can get in part way through the 2027