On Friday afternoon, news broke — or Tampa Bay Rays co-president Matt Silverman declared, which isn’t quite the same thing — that Rays management had proposed an alternative deal to building a new $1.3 billion stadium with $1 billion in public money: instead spending $600 million, $400 million of it from the city and the county, to upgrade their current home of Tropicana Field. As part of the deal, the Rays would agree to a 10-year lease extension that would keep the team at the stadium through 2038.
“It is one of many possibilities that has been discussed with the city and the county since the hurricanes,” Rays president Matt Silverman said Friday. “We are open to any and all avenues that results in the Rays thriving here in Tampa Bay for years and for decades.”
It’s kind of weird for Silverman to only publicly mention it now, when his boss, Rays owner Stu Sternberg, has officially stuck a fork in St. Peterburg stadium plans and been met by Mayor Ken Welch sticking a fork in his willingness to work with Sternberg. But setting aside for the moment whether Silverman is sincere or just trying to save some public face with a “well, we tried,” would this have been a good deal for St. Pete? And why did city and county officials reject it?
On the first question, spending $400 million in public money is a lot better than spending $1 billion, obviously. But we also have to keep in mind the length of the lease: If the Rays could demand a new stadium again in 2038, that’s a cost of $40 million per year of the team’s commitment to play in St. Pete, whereas the new stadium would have been $33 million per year. There is some benefit to kicking the can further down the road.
Plus, there are a couple of other potential reasons Welch in particular may have been unenthused about Sternberg’s offer:
- Welch could have his heart set on a wider redevelopment of the Gas Plant District. All indications are that the bit about this project that truly excites the mayor is redeveloping the site of an old African American neighborhood that was demolished in the 1980s to make way for the dome. Just gussying up the Trop, even at a lesser price tag, might not have seemed worth it.
- A lease extension would come with other pitfalls. If Sternberg’s renovation plan would have included a simple extension of the lease as-is, then he would have retained 50% of the stadium site’s development rights for another 10 years, whereas allowing the lease to expire in 2028 will mean the city can reclaim those then. That’s a significant amount of value, and handing it over to Sternberg along with $400 million would start adding up to a pile of money. It’s worth noting that Welch said on Thursday, “We need to get the termination [letter], if they’re going in that direction, to make sure that all the boxes are checked there. And we’ll talk with the council and with the community about the paths forward.”
St. Pete Chamber of Commerce CEO Chris Steinocher did express mild enthusiasm for the plan, saying, “I do believe those conversations will happen as everybody calms down” and “At some point, we can open the door to when and how a plan like this might work.” Steinocher doesn’t get a vote on the city council or county commission, though, and since the old stadium deal was decided last July both of those legislative bodies have gotten new members who are not so enthused about giving Sternberg a pile of public cash. There’s a whole lot of jockeying for leverage to come, it’s clear, so expect lots more gambits like these in the coming weeks and months — unless MLB really decides to throw a bomb into the proceedings by telling Sternberg to sell the team if he knows what’s good for him.
I doubt even MLB would have gone along with these plans had both sides agreed to it either, considering its own (stated) insistence on having all long-term stadium “issues” resolved and wanting to kickstart the expansion process.
This whole routine from the Rays prez is somewhat akin to a guy or a girl asking their partner/spouse if their pants made their butts look big, and expecting to hear “no no, you’re good” in response. I think the people of St Pete (and TB as a whole) should go ahead and tell him he’s out here looking like a blue whale.
It seems like the only beneficiaries of this proposal would be the Rays, as it’d essentially buy them a decade to figure out their next move. Maybe get a fatter deal from Pinellas, maybe get a site in Tampa they always wanted, maybe get Montreal or whoever to pony up insane sums, maybe just pawn the team off at a better price point (you have to think they’re at the lowest right now given everything). It’d also maybe stave off the folks in the MLB offices who’d like to punt Sternberg for good, at least for a little while.
St. Pete was right to shoot this down. Any way you look at it, they clearly would be doing the Rays a favor and not the other way around.
For just $40m a year, you too can win the right to be lobbied, lied to, lied about, and just generally insulted by team ownership for another decade!