The Tampa Bay Rays have scheduled two more “community engagement sessions” on their new $2.3 billion Tampa stadium project plans, which are less public forums than places where Rays officials talk at residents and take questions. And what sorts of things are they saying?
“We took a no-harm approach to the work that we’re doing. No part of our financial proposal will take funding away from other priorities that the city and county have committed to,” [Rays CEO Ken] Babby said [during a recent community meeting at Hillsborough College]. “No part of our financial proposal will take money away from other sports teams in the community that desperately also have asked for resources around an opportunity.”
That is … innovative? Batshit crazy? Suggesting that a project can siphon off $1.15 billion in tax money while also taking up $250 million worth of state-owned land that currently hosts a community college campus that will need to be relocated, all while paying no property taxes over a 99-year lease (estimated loss to the public: $839 million), and that this won’t prevent the city or county from funding anything else they might like is a bold claim, and the sort of thing that might get pushback if you said it in an actual public hearing. Or maybe there was pushback, nobody seems to have reported what the questions were at this public session, so for all we know Babby was greeted with a surge of derisive laughter and WUSF just didn’t tell us.
The Tampa NPR station also had this to say about Babby’s presentation:
The Rays would build surrounding development, including hotels, offices, restaurants, residential and recreational areas, that would be “100 percent” privately financed, with tax dollars from the district used to eventually pay off the tab.
Roll that around in your brain for a second: A “100 percent” privately financed development project paid for with tax dollars. That only works if you consider any tax money paid by you or anyone connected with your project to be really your money, because they got it from us, you got it from them, you give it back to us, everybody’s even.
The whole point of public forums is for the public to be able to ask tough questions about a proposed project, and maybe even engage in a debate about its merits. But for these — at least as far as they’re making it into news reports — it seems like everyone is just assuming that Babby’s claims are factual, and you know what the great thinkers say about why you shouldn’t assume.
The next public sessions are tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at the Press Box, 222 S. Dale Mabry Highway, and next Wednesday On April 1 at 6:30 p.m. in the Robinson High School auditorium, 6311 S. Lois Ave. If any Field of Schemes readers can attend, please report back.
Going from of one of the write-ups… did nobody press the Rays execs about their claim that “a new stadium could attract up to 10 million additional visitors each year?”
In a sport where even the most well-supported big market teams “only” draw around 3-4 million every year. That nobody apparently asked them about this indicates to me what kind of public forum this was and what types of questions were being asked.
Oh, good catch — I was actually going to call that out, but forgot to mention it when I did this writeup. Even taking at face value that a Rays stadium can host 175 events a year (that’d be 81 baseball games, maybe a half-dozen concerts, and the rest … are monster truck rallies still big?), 57,000 people would have to go to each of them to get to 10 million visitors, and the stadium is only supposed to hold 31,000. I guess they’re counting people who would eat even one meal in the new stadium district, but still it’s a pretty bonkers number to throw out there without explanation.
That visitor figure is based on what has happened in Atlanta and is including the surrounding mixed use development. The Battery gets between 7-9 million visitors per year in an area that has no beaches and no other professional sports and worse traffic than Tampa. This new development can bring in new events and conventions and businesses that an empty plot of land could never deliver. Please don’t hate it just because it’s baseball.
A lot of those visitors, though, just like a lot of the Battery visitors, are just going to be people who otherwise would have been shopping elsewhere locally but got diverted to the new development. This might be a plus for Tampa if it’s stealing from a neighboring city, but is less so for the county and probably a complete wash for the state.
An analysis of actual county tax revenue from the Braves stadium and the Battery is that the net increase is about $10m a year. If you assume that will go up over time, that’s enough to cover maybe $200-300m in public costs. Add in city tax revenue and you’re doing a little better, but there is no way in hell it’s going to come anywhere close to $2.25 billion.
https://www.kennesaw.edu/coles/centers/markets-economic-opportunity/docs/bradbury-cobb-report-march-2022.pdf
Nobody hates it because it’s baseball, they hate it because it’s a ripoff and the proponents are lying about it
What new events? Anything that needs a larger capacity than Benchmark Arena or MidFlorida will just use Raymond James.
The development is more likely to displace business from Columbus and International Plaza than it is to create new demand.
“… this won’t prevent the city or county from funding anything else they might like is a bold claim …”
The claim was not taking from projects that officials have committed to, not any they might want or should commit to in future. So what they said was true … from a certain point of view.
Thank you Obi-Wan!
I have found that public fora are less about letting the public ask tough questions or debating the merits of a project, than it is about the developers or the government “well actuallying” the tough questions, or being swarmed by people who support the project because they will directly benefit from it (construction workers), or have received goodies from the developer at some point (recipients of the developer’s largesse or charitable funding).
not a lot of answers to tough questions. very little debate.
good times.
“ Please don’t miss this golden opportunity to keep our beloved Rays in Tampa Bay and create 12K jobs and an iconic ballpark for generations to come. We realize this is a serious investment but a wise one that will bring HC a new campus, countless and much needed job opportunities for your constituents and a brilliant use of public lands and resources that will be returned to the community many times over!
Don’t be the vote that sent our MLB team to Orlando or one of 10 other cities that would kill for this incredible public/private partnership. We will remember. What will be your legacy?” X post: JP Peterson Show
Is he a paid lobbyist for the Rays franchise?
I mean, let’s be real. There aren’t “10 other cities that would kill for this incredible public/private partnership.”