We finally have a price tag on how much Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants in spending by Hillsborough County to help build a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa:
A notice for the meeting says the Rays would pay at least half the cost of a stadium. The rest could come from tourist bed taxes or increases in property taxes collected from the surrounding area after a stadium is built.
So if Zalupski is asking for the county to cover half the cost of building a $2.3 billion stadium, that’s $1.15 billion. (Whether county hotel tax receipts plus increased property tax proceeds would be enough to raise $1.15 billion is a question no one appears to have asked yet, though I suppose they could always just make the stadium tax district the size of the entire county, as one does. WUSF also suggests several other funding options that could be on the table, including a Community Development District and hotel and car rental tax surcharges.) The cost of providing state-owned land has previously been estimated to be at minimum $250 million, plus the Rays would duck out of $839 million worth of future property taxes and parcel fees over the course of their 99-year lease. Add it all up, and you’re at something like $2.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies that Zalupski is requesting, which would be by far the biggest public spend on a stadium deal in MLB history.
Or, if you’re the Tampa Bay Times, you go with this glass-half-full headline:
Rays tell Hillsborough they’ll cover at least 50% of Tampa stadium cost
Focusing on the fact that the billionaire who just bought the local sports team plans to cover half the cost of a stadium that he’ll receive all the revenues from, instead of the fact that he’s asking the public to cover the other half, is certainly a choice. (As is describing the team as having “honed in on” Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, which is not the actual phrase, but that’s a separate issue.)
The meeting referenced above is tomorrow’s Hillsborough County commission meeting, which kicks off at 9 a.m. — the official agenda doesn’t actually mention anything about a Rays stadium, though it does helpfully include a link to a giant image of an American flag. With any luck, we’ll get some questions then about why the county should gift Zalupski more than $2 billion just so the baseball team he bought for $1.7 billion can increase in value; maybe we can even hope to get some answers, but we probably shouldn’t push our luck.
Oh, the steal-o-garchy congeals again around some hapless american city…
Even a $1.15 billion subsidy would have been a staggering amount for a franchise that no other city/metro area is actively courting (no, Orlando is absolutely not a serious candidate here). Doubling that amount would be the very definition of “hustling backwards.”
That said, I think it’s more likely than not that this deal gets done sometime before Meatball Ron’s term ends. Zalupski and the Rays’ other owners have political connections in the state and in the TB region that Sternberg never bothered to build up during his tenure, and they’ll want to make something happen before someone new takes over in Tallahassee.
My sense is the entire point of the exercise was that Zalupski would buy the team and get the governor to grease the skids (for an appropriate board position/job/kickback) so that the new owners could get a whole bunch of public money.
This is a totally misguided boondoggle with taxpayer money, and I say that as a Rays fan and someone who grew up on the Hillsborough side. We have almost 30 years of proof that the market really does not care about this team. (Local TV ratings have been pretty good, but they’ve never been able to draw crowds, in part because of location but in part because they have long been on mind-altering drugs that kept them from understanding pricing structures and supply and demand.)
So I agree with you. This may very well get pushed through a friendly legislature and local electeds before next January.
Agree with both of you. I keep seeing build it in Tampa and they will come, but outside of the 30 minute circle where is there any evidence at all of this being true? Even given the circumstances last years attendance was bad, 9712 in a 11,000 seat stadium.
In FSL, Clearwater does triple the attendance of Tampa despite another FSL team 5 miles down the road and the Rays 20 minutes down the road. In a smaller stadium and of a farm team of a much less popular MLB team.
Miami’s new stadium had a 1 year honeymoon before going back to baseline. I keep hearing that Miami Gardens is the reason for low attendance for Miami Hurricanes football. The Marlins should have obviously thrived at the Orange Bowl site.
TV ratings are crashing.
All of this always gets handwaved away and Politicos will ignore this in their excitement to give a rich guy free money and have box seats.
The Tampa Bay Times and Rays writer Marc Topkin have been on their knees sucking off the Rays for years. No tough questions asked, everything framed in a positive light. No editors, reporters or columnists are looking out for the citizens, just want to cover their little games.
Colleen Wright at the TBT has done a decent job of actually reporting the Rays stadium news rather than playing stenographer to Rays execs. She’s been pretty much alone on that one, though.