Posted on 06/15/2024 2:23:17 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Who's picking up the tab for the new Tampa Bay Rays's $1.3 billion ballpark, where’s that funding is coming from, and other lingering questions were answered this week during a seven-hour-long discussion.
On Wednesday morning, St. Pete City Councilmembers, Mayor Ken Welch, and Rays executives hashed out the details of the stadium agreement during a Committee of the Whole workshop meeting.
On Thursday, St. Petersburg City Council preliminarily voted 5-3 to approve a development agreement for the new Rays stadium. The opposing votes came from Councilmembers Lisset Hanewicz, John Muhammad, and Richie Floyd.
Also passed were ordinances that will rezone 24 acres of the Historic Gas Plant District, and modify the Intown West Redevelopment Plan to accomodate the new stadium.
Another Committee of the Whole workshop is slated for July 9th and a second hearing and final vote is scheduled for July 11th.
Designed by architectural firm Populous, the enclosed stadium is set to be the most intimate in Major League Baseball (MLB) with a capacity of 30,000.
The latest renderings presented during the meeting showed a fixed glass roof and large windows and porches spanning across the walls, allowing natural daylight to pour in while keeping the stadium climate-controlled.
Per the current agreement, St. Pete will fund $287.5 million, Pinellas County will contribute $312.5 million, and the Rays are responsible for the remaining $700 million to cover the construction of the stadium that will anchor the redevelopment of the 86-acre Gas Plant District.
(Excerpt) Read more at stpeterising.com ...
Was just in Tampa for the Cubs series.
The upper deck was shut down for the games as there weren’t enough attendees to get close to filling it.
The current stadium while having the aesthetics of fancy high school gym is perfectly serviceable.
Waste of money to build a new stadium.
That's why the games are for gamblers nowadays. They don't care that ordinary fans are no longer interested.
I recall the stinkfest surrounding the construction of the original stadium when I lived in Florida. I’ve been gone a long time, but I assume this is the first new replacement.
For some reason construction workers took issue with snipers taking pot shots at them. There was also IIRC an issue with the land having EPA level contamination.
Just saying that they (the franchise) are proven winners. Unlike any other waste of tax payer’s money.
*<>The real question: What does Ron DeSantis think?<>
IIRC, DeSantis denied state funding a couple years ago.*
Wonderful. Thanks for the heads up. Guess that means he’s not like the rest of them.
It’s all about tv money. Like Miami, they don’t care if anyone shows up. They get paid anyway. Lose the team, lose the tv money.
What’s going to happen to the old stadium? When it sat for eight years without a team, I called it the third largest thing ever built for the wrong reason, after the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China.
Well I’m a little bit ahead of you on the curve there but pretty much on the same page. I’ve not watched the last few Super Bowls and I not missing them at all. This year all the info about it I got from FR and no where else.
Tropicana Field is the worst Ballpark in Baseball. A dump.
Considering that DeSantis played on a championship Little League team and college baseball it’s good he didn’t let his love for the sport overcome his good fiscal judgement.
Worked well for Oakland.
And the White Sox, at one point.
Go Army.
The fans are better off with a smallish stadium, with plenty of restrooms and no screens to watch commercials and the game. I liked it best in a 4,000 seat Depression era ballfield with covered stands. Good food, good baseball, low prices.
Fans do not need multi million or billion dollar venues to enjoy the game. The OWNERS need it, and the players want it because they get too much money.
The Juice Squeezer
I used to enjoy watching the Super Bowl. It was a great spectacle. You had amazing athletes like Tom Brady who wanted to win the Super Bowl. That said, now it's all about the celebrities attending the event. And the half time show. Now I'm at the point where I'm not even sure I'll watch the Super Bowl next year.
Hard to believe but the World Cup is probably more entertaining. At least the game is over in two hours.
The cost of this stadium is roughly the same as the civil judgement against Alex Jones... just to put it all in perspective.
2023 Home Regular Season Attendance: 1,440,301 (13th of 15)
2023 Home Regular Season Attendance: 2,274,144
They had no rainouts at home, but the three rained out games replayed drew 33,803, 15,428 and 30,860 at Boston, Kansas City and Los Angeles.
The fist of two Wildcard games at Tropicana Attendance: 19,704 and the second was 20,198. They do not even need the 30,000 capacity stadium. It is actually larger than the artificial current capacity of Tropicana. It apparently has a built capacity of 45,369.
Trpoicana is onwed by City of St. Petersburg.
Record: 99-63-0, Finished 2nd in AL_East
Except for land acquisition (land can be sold in the future to essentially recover its cost), governments should stay out of the stadium business.
Dumb to put it in St. Petersburg.
Should be in downtown Tampa, near where the Lightning and Bucs play.
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