The answers to how long a repair of the Tampa Bay Rays stadium roof is expected to take and how much it’s expected to cost are in, and they are: one year and $55.7 million. That’s according to a damage assessment report conducted by, uh, that Tampa Bay Times story didn’t bother to say, thanks, Marc Topkin! Here we go, Bay News 9 has a link to the actual report, it’s by Hennessy Construction Services and AECOM Hunt; these are the kind of firms likely to be hired to do the work, so I’m inclined to believe they’re not lowballing, or at least not by much.
The Hennessy/AECOM report goes on to say that the roof’s 24 support columns show “no signs of cracking or other distress,” and the cables that held up the roof and their anchorages look to be undamaged. It recommends replacing the old PTFE-coated fiberglass fabric roof with PVC-coated polyester fabric, noting that this while would only be rated to last five years, that hardly matters since the stadium is slated to be torn down in three. The fabric itself would cost about $15 million, with the remaining $40 million for other repairs (including $6 million already allocated by the city to emergency waterproofing), insurance, and other sundries.
The big question before the St. Petersburg city council is: Do they go ahead and repair a stadium that would, by the time it reopened in 2026, only have two years of life left? Probably yes: The city is in line to get $25 million back from its insurance, and $30 million to get two years of use out of a stadium isn’t awful. (By comparison, the public is spending around $1 billion for a new stadium that will likely only be in use for around 30 years, so that’s more than double the cost per year.) Plus, St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch noted that the Rays’ lease on Tropicana Field says it is “suspended” if the stadium unplayable for a year, which would mean it could be extended through 2028, with the new stadium not opening until 2029, in which case you’re only talking about $10 million per season of use.
And if Welch or the St. Pete council really wants to play hardball, there’s this: Having the Rays play at Tropicana for two seasons rather than in a minor-league stadium would be way more of a benefit to Rays owner Stu Sternberg than to the city — so there’s no reason the city couldn’t ask Sternberg to chip in some for repairs, as a token of good will toward hurricane-ravaged citizens and appreciation for the $1 billion taxpayer check he’s about to cash. (There’s also the question of whether the roof repairs fall under the Rays lease’s “repairs” clause that the team has to cover after insurance or its “force majeure” clause that the city has to cover, but that’s the kind of thing that lawyers are likely to have to hash out.) Yes, threatening not to repair the roof otherwise could mean breaking the team’s lease; but then, the lease is only good for another two (or three) years anyway, and Sternberg already has a new stadium approved, so what’s he gonna do, move to Greensboro in a huff over $30 million?
Add in that the Pinellas County Commission might conceivably now have an anti-stadium-deal majority, and pretty much anything and everything is back in play now. The likeliest scenario is still that St. Petersburg agrees to shell out $30 million for a temporary fix, the $1 billion in city and county money for a new stadium goes ahead, and Sternberg doesn’t dip into his own pocket for any of his $800 million net worth, nor the estimated $68 million in profits he earned from the Rays last year. Still, it’s not impossible that at least some of this goes back to the drawing board, all thanks to an untimely hurricane, an even more untimely decision by the St. Pete council to cut their insurance coverage to save a few dollars, and a timely election; if so, that would be one hell of a plot twist.
Another potential complicating factor: this new storm brewing out in the Caribbean might blow *those* plans to smithereens, too. https://weathernerds.org/tc_guidance/images/AL99_2024111306_GEFS_large.png?1731497820
Meanwhile, just up the road here in Orlando… the city is about to throw another $400 million into the endless, bottomless money pit that is the Citrus Bowl (I’ll never refer to it by its corporate name) on the basis that, in the words of the chief of Orlando Venues, “this is going to be the nicest non-NFL stadium in the country.”
Yes, he really was quoted as saying that.
https://www.wesh.com/article/camping-world-stadium-400-million-renovation/62844452
And just for good measure, the city is also throwing another $226 million toward the Kia Center — the recently renamed home of the Magic, presumably because the optics of having AMWAY on the external signage was getting to be untenable — and Buddy Dyer (the “mayor” of Orlando) explained the investment [sic] with a line about “think of your house at the age of 14 where things start to need to be replaced.” Buddy… if every house had to essentially be turned over after 14 years, nobody would take out lines of credit to buy one in the first place.
https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/news/2024/11/12/camping-world-stadium-kia-center-upgrades-council.html
Yeah, I started to write up a post about this on Monday, then realized that the money was actually approved last January, so it wasn’t quite breaking news:
https://www.wftv.com/news/local/orange-county-leaders-approve-400-million-tourism-tax-funds-camping-world-stadium-renovation/3CLCJLS4M5CFTENIZXDAP2LWCI/
I’ll work on untangling the timeline for Friday’s news roundup.
Maybe Orlando ressurects the Orlando Dreamers stadium idea that Pat Williams thought up
God rest Pat Williams’ soul, but his Dreamers “proposal” to the Orange County tourism commission involved him breaking into a song. It was an unserious plan that didn’t even ask to be taken seriously. Any hopes of the Dreamers even becoming something resembling a thing perished when Pat Williams did.
I didn’t think it was serious considering the Rays were working on staying in the Tampa area. Just wondering if the new county officials don’t want to go forward and they need to pivot to a new spot could Orlando get in the mix.
Orlando is far and away the largest metro area in the US without a minor league, and nobody here thinks anything of it. The appetite just isn’t there, from either the civic or governmental perspective, for organized pro ball at any level.
Last question. Does the presence of spring training and minor league baseball deaden the desire for major league teams? If I can see all the same guys for $10 during the spring I am a lot less likely to shell out $50 for a regular season game. Or does the fact that so many people are transplants who already have loyalties elsewhere make it harder for teams to build a fan base?
The latter is way more of a factor imo. If spring training really mattered, transplant fans wouldn’t go to regular season games in St Pete or Miami, either.
And to expand on the transplant-vs-local fanbase dynamic: the only pro teams in Florida that have anything resembling the type of “generational” support that exists for Northeastern and Midwestern teams are the Dolphins and the Buccaneers — even still, their home games often get hijacked by transplant fans of said Northeastern/Midwestern teams.
Franchises like the Rays, the Jaguars, the Magic, the Panthers etc. are just old enough now to have had one generation of local fans who grew up with those teams, who have no memories of a time without those teams, and who are able to pass their fandoms down to their own kids. Nevertheless, the percentage of born-and-bred Floridians in fast-growing places like Tampa/St Pete, South Florida, Jacksonville, and Orlando are incredibly low relative to the overall population. These are still essentially small markets in terms of the number of core fans they have, and in the number of new fans they can reasonably hope to attract and/or convert.
Jacksonville whatever Jaguars stadium
Amway or whatever Arena
Another $400 million for a stadium that who plays in?
Miami Marlins bond fiasco
Tropicana Field and replacement for a team that draws slightly better than Oakland did.
Florida politicians who voted for this, you’re on at least strike 5, better get checked for dementia.
5 stadium boosters were on the ballot last week. 4 lost.
On a related note, the Rays just announced they will play their entire 2025 home schedule at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, spring training home of the Yankees.
They did.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/rays-to-play-home-games-at-steinbrenner-field-rival-yankees-facility-in-tampa/ar-AA1u5WMS#image=1
And since it is the only course of action that makes any sense, I am genuinely shocked that the team and MLB are doing this.