New Tampa Bay Rays owners Patrick Zalupski, Ken Babby, and Bill Cosgrove held their first press conference yesterday since buying the team, and a lot of it was focused on plans for a new stadium in the wake of the collapse of former owner Stu Sternberg’s stadium plans, in the wake of the more literal collapse of the Tropicana Field roof. Zalupski said he and his fellow owners intend to have a “new forever home” open by March 2029 — a timeline he described as “aggressive, and perhaps audacious” — at a site yet to be determined. “We’re looking at everywhere,” added Babby. “We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves to one location or site.”
So far that’s just the expected rhetoric, complete with an arbitrary, unreasonable target date: Getting a stadium funded and built within three and a half years is crazy talk when you haven’t even figured out yet where you want to build it. Though for a site that’s as yet unidentified, Zalupski had a lot to say about it:
The new site will be a roughly 100-acre development with hotels, office and retail spaces, restaurants, bars and more, Zalupski said, adding that the stadium will be fully enclosed. The site will host 150 to 180 events per year, including concerts. Zalupski said he views the Atlanta Braves stadium, Truist Park, as a model.
A reference to the Atlanta Braves stadium district is expected as well, as that’s become a common demand of sports team owners since The Battery opened in Cobb County in 2017. The Braves owners are raking in profits from the new real estate development — money that isn’t subject to MLB revenue sharing — with the help of subsidies that are costing county taxpayers $15 million a year, and who wouldn’t want that? In fact, the new Rays owners seem intent on outdoing The Battery: A hundred acres would be even bigger than the Braves’ 75 acres, and Zalupski may not stop there, saying, “We want a great location and as much land as we can get.”
So the new Rays owners want access to a huge plot of land — bigger than the entire Gas Plant District site in St. Petersburg that Sternberg had previously targeted for a stadium and a whole lot of other stuff — and haven’t said what if anything they propose to pay for it. But what about straight-up government cash payments, will they be asking for any of those?
Hillsborough County Commissioner Joshua Wostal said he has not yet spoken to anyone from the new ownership group but has heard from others that the Rays are seeking $1.1 billion in public subsidies.
That $1.1 billion figure is extreme hearsay, obviously, and should be taken with appropriate grains of salt at least until such time as Wostal gives some idea who these mysterious “others” are. But Zalupski did say that it was “critical to have a public/private partnership,” which is generally code for “we want the public to cover a lot of our costs” — and $1.1 billion wouldn’t be much more than Sternberg was seeking, if you count the public land he was set to get at a steep discount.
Tl;dr: The new Rays owners want a lot of land, and a lot of money for building stuff on it, and are looking for a government entity willing to hand it over to them — and in time to open a stadium by spring 2029. “Audacious” seems like a good word for that, yes, but never underestimate the power of mediocre white billionaires to get their way.
Spot on. More BS coming from the new crop of greedy assholes. Too bad the journalists in the area will be busy slobbering over them , instead of asking them and local officials some hard, factual questions.
Not sure why you had to drag their race into it, though.
“Mediocre white male billionaires” would have fit the common phrasing better, but I didn’t like the scansion.
In his defense, I started that particular description one night around 3 am when the cops pulled me over and asked why I had $29k in cash in a paper bag.
The nerve of some people.
So the plot of land needed is bigger.
The public subsidy sought is bigger.
The team is regressing.
But because the guys making the ask are different, it’s going to be easier to get this done?
Skeptical.
100 acres is what, roughly 2,000 ft by 2,000 ft? The city core of Tampa (and even more so St Pete) is built-up enough that it would appear to be almost impossible to find the type of space they want for that type of development without going down the eminent domain route.
Unless there’s like a dead mall or something that they can buy on the cheap and transform into their own image, they’ll either have to downscale their development ambitions or pivot to a new concept.
I know the incoming owners have to over-promise to some degree when introducing themselves to their new audience, but damn.
I *THINK* Westshore Mall is meeting the wrecking ball, but I also believe there are already plans for that site.
“We want a great location and as much land as we can get.”
He didn’t say “For Free”. Maybe there is a golden rainbow/land of chocolate angle to this after all….
Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahah….
He left the last part out most likely because he expects to be paid to take this free land…
Meet the new boss. (Bah, ba-daaaa). Same as the old boss.
Chutzpah Park has a nice ring to it.
The city and county offered the Rays at least $2.6 billion and the Rays said no deal.
I think that was the best deal the team owner could have had.
The media scam said no public funding, only tourist taxes and TIF money. Local media hyped huge community benefits that evaporated when the final contract was presented and approved by star struck elected officials.
Hidden subsidies include decades of tax breaks and the equivalent of a thirty year interest free loan.
Visit NoHomeRun.com for detailed analysis.
It wasn’t worth $2.6 billion in present-day dollars — NoHomeRun.com uses nominal figures over 30 years, which is like saying you bought a $2 million house because that’s how much your interest payments will add up to over time.
The city and the county did offer over $1 billion worth of cash, tax breaks, and land discounts, though, which is still a ton of money. Sternberg seems to have turned it down because he was steamed that he had to explain to local officials why he should still get priority for this money in the middle of a natural disaster — it’s probably not too much to infer that MLB arm-twisted him to sell the team to someone who would know to cash a $1 billion check when it’s handed to you.
Indeed.
I am struggling to understand how there could be any reason to turn down such a generous subsidy offer…
Unless, of course, the beneficiary could not raise the share of the total budget he had agreed to pony up. That would be tremendously embarrassing when more than 2/3rds of the total project appeared to be publicly funded. Sternberg’s net worth even very late in his Rays ownership tenure still seemed to show that the majority of his wealth came from owning his share (48% as I recall) of the team.
Even if he had no cash at all (which I am emphatically not suggesting is the case), it should have been possible to borrow against the value of the team to post his required amounts. That might/would have required MLB permission, of course… or might have left his ownership share diluted…
Could it be he feared losing Managing General Partner status to another investor if he borrowed heavily against the value of his share of the team?
Another option could be that his GP investors were unwilling to put up cash for a stadium when their Managing Partner had cut them out of annual profit distributions for a decade or two.
Hard to say without having access to this (or any other) General Partnership agreement.