What do you get when you spend $2.3 billion on a baseball stadium? Not a top-of-the-line roof, apparently: An architectural report for the Tampa Bay Rays has found that the curved “grid shell roof” the team has requested would add about $300 million to the stadium’s cost. A fabric polymer roof was suggested by the Rays’ construction contractors, but architects warned that that material “can lead to rapid depressurization” and instead suggested a “trussed arched roof,” which is what the Dallas Cowboys stadium uses, among others.
The good news for Florida residents is that the Rays owner Patrick Zalupski would be on the hook for whatever the roof ends up costing, since he’s agreed to pay cost overruns. (Though since he’s set to get $2.25 billion worth of subsidies from the city, county, and state, Zalupski can afford a schmancy roof if that’s what his heart desires.) It’s a cautionary tale for other cities that it’s important to cap public costs, though — see, for example, Boston, where the renovation of city-owned White Stadium for Boston Legacy FC is continuing to go not well at all:
Opposition to the city’s now $325 million public-private plan to rebuild White Stadium for a pro soccer team has intensified following the latest taxpayer cost update, and exposed the mayor’s fractured relationship with the Black community.
Residents and city councilors who oppose the project, which now has taxpayers coughing up $135 million to cover the city’s costs, forcefully pushed back on Wu administration officials’ insistence that new costs announced last month are final and that the city had no other choice but to pursue a public-private stadium rehab.
We already found out last month that the public cost was up to $135 million, but if residents and city councilors are now wondering if it could go even higher, who can blame them? Stadium proponents have absolutely no reason not to lowball projected costs in order to get public officials on the hook, figuring if the real numbers eventually come in higher, it’ll be too late to back out — it’s the same gambit New York City power broker Robert Moses used to use to get the government to fund projects he knew they would back at the price of, by spending all his money building, say, half a bridge and then daring officials to leave it unfinished. This makes it absolutely vital for cities to ensure that team owners cover all cost overruns, and no cheating by working in “maintenance funds” that let them fob off costs onto future public subsidies, either.
At a Boston city council hearing yesterday, Reggie Stewart, a member of the local District 7 advisory council, warned Mayor Michelle Wu and city councilors that they’ll have to face the wrath of voters for squandering their money on a pro soccer stadium instead of using it to improve their neighborhoods. We’ll see — voters are notoriously fickle about penalizing elected officials over single issues, when they even have a viable alternative in the first place — but if it did happen, they wouldn’t be the first politicians voted out of office because they handed the keys to the store to the local sports owner.