We have finally hit that part of the season where the A and B plots converge, and it is predictably zany: Pinellas County commissioners, trying to decide what to demand in exchange for approving Tampa Bay Rays stadium bonds at their next meeting tomorrow, have landed on “How about one of those toothless letters like John Fisher gave to Nevada about the Athletics stadium?”
“We have a congruent comparable right now happening in Nevada, in Las Vegas,” Commissioner Vince Nowicki said…
Before that vote on Dec. 5, A’s owner John Fisher provided the board with documents showing his financing is in place.
Letters include a review of his finances, bank loan commitments and a pledge from Fisher and his family to cover $1.1 billion of the total cost.
“Why can’t we get that same treatment from our owner?” Nowicki questioned. “I don’t think it’s asking a lot for the Rays to be able to show, ‘Hey, we have the money to do this if they’re serious about staying here.'”
That is literally the least that the commission could ask, given that Fisher’s “pledge” just amounts to “yes, my family has $1.1 billion if we want to spend it.” He’s still trying to shop around a one-quarter share of the team for $500 million, which is a crazy valuation when the Baltimore Orioles just sold for $1.725 billion — even if Fisher is trying to assemble some vaguely recognizable names like Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs, that’s unlikely to make anyone confuse the A’s with one of the best young teams in baseball.
Sternberg, in fact, already has to provide documents guaranteeing his end of the deal before the bonds can be sold, something county commissioner Chris Scherer noted in saying he wanted to see the Rays “provide us with assurances that they can meet their 11 conditions.” This is a very weird thing to go to the mat over, given that if Sternberg doesn’t come up with his share of the money by March, he has to back out of the deal himself — especially since if he does back out of the deal, he doesn’t really have any other good options that don’t mean playing in a minor-league stadium for four or more years — but apparently that’s where things have landed.
Tomorrow’s commission meeting starts at 6 pm ET [CORRECTION: I’m now told it will be part of the 2 pm ET session] and can be watched online here. I’m going to skip liveblogging this one, but will report back on Wednesday with the denouement.
MOVE THE TEAM already to Nashville or Charlotte. The attendance in St. Petersburg is brutally lacking “Major League City”.
Agree, a City of 250,000 people can’t afford to subsidize an MLB team or give them 60 acres of prime downtown real estate for nothing. Voters have spoken, stop the steal.
The Tampa Bay metro area is the 17th largest in the US. More than 3 million people.
Unfortunately, it is hard for many of them to get to St Petersburg because, being Florida, it is mostly sprawl. Paying low taxes for crappy infrastructure is Freedom, apparently.
“Prime downtown real estate” is not really a thing any more. Certainly, it is not what it used to be. Have you been downtown in a big city lately? There are a lot fewer people there than there were a few years ago. A lot of vacancies. The days when everyone went into town to work in an office or to shop are long gone and are not coming back.
Cities are desperate to come up with something to revitalize those areas, which they should be. Dense development is far more cost-effective than sprawl. But an increasing number of people would rather just sit in their gated community and fill their head with Trumpian nightmares about violent homeless people than vote for anything that would revive urban centers.
Giving a billion dollars to a billionaire to build a ballpark is not a cost-effective way to fix that, but the problem is very real.
Neither Nashville or Charlotte would be any more hospitable attendance-wise for the Rays franchise than St Pete (or Tampa’s side of the bay if that had happened). Those are also two cities whose growths have been almost entirely dependent on the influx of out-of-towners who bring their existing local loyalties and rooting interests with them, and would have no reason to support them if and when an on-field downturn occurs.
Sternberg and co might just have to sit in this uncertainty beyond the existing lease with the city of St Pete — or sell to someone who’s actually capable of resolving it. At this rate, the former might actually be easier.
Why does anyone need to subsidize an MLB team that, per forbes, generates an average profit in the $40-60m range every year?
Vis the A’s… I am still betting that Severino’s contract will be the first in history to have a player opt out before the first season begins…
Over, under, or push: the Rays will play one season this decade in an actual major league park. I think I’m going under.
I think we’re just seeing the beginning of the endgame for the last 30 years of teams extorting public money for stadiums. There simply are not any other markets available that are obviously better than the ones these teams are in.
The moves the NHL made in the 90s or the Expos to Washington, or even moving two NFL teams to LA sorta made sense insofar as they were moving to bigger markets.
But Vegas is a downgrade from Oakland, and nowhere realistically available is clearly better than Tampa Bay.
But we’ll probably see teams move to smaller markets and continue to struggle. I believe the A’s will land in Vegas and it will go badly. I also believe the Rays will end up in Nashville or Omaha or whatever and it will go even worse than it has in Tampa Bay.
The Rays have a billion dollar gift of publicly owned real estate in addition to their $600 million stadium subsidy. No other city can come close to that massive give away.
They can raise lots of cash by selling parcels of land for four times what the city pretends it is worth.
As a Sacramento, CA resident, I’m planning to see a few A’s games this year. I wonder if Fisher is trying to land a riverfront land deal with Sacramento or Yolo (where the minor league park is located) Counties. But I’ve been to plenty of games at the minor league park and it is, well, minor league quality. Nice for minor league, but nothing like a major league park. If the A’s actually go to Vegas, Sacramento will have had a taste of major league baseball. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Rays decide California sunshine is more to their liking. The local politicians around here salivate at the prospect of dispensing public money for a sports team. Former mayor K. Johnson (ex pro basketball player) landed on a sale of city parking revenue for 50 years to get around two election results in which voters turned down public money for the new basketball arena (Golden 1 Center).