Photo by Sofía García Vargas | The Crow’s Nest
By Alisha Durosier
As the Tampa Bay Rays begin a new season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the City of St. Petersburg is also entering a new phase after the Rays announced that they will not be moving forward with the 86-acre, Historic Gas Plant District redevelopment project and stadium deal.
Slated to take place over the course of approximately 20 years, the $6.5 billion redevelopment project between the city, the Rays and Hines, a real estate developer, had been in the works since 2023 and was approved last July.
On March 13, just weeks before the Rays’ March 31 deadline to meet the obligations of the agreement, Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg announced the team’s decision in a social media statement.
“After careful deliberation, we have concluded we cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment,” Sternberg said in the statement. “A series of events beginning in October that no one could have anticipated led to this difficult decision.”
Back-to-back hurricanes in September and October of 2024, one of which ripped through Tropicana Field’s Teflon roof, delayed the St. Petersburg City Council and Pinellas County Commissioners votes that would have officially issued millions in bonds to help the Rays build their $1.3 billion stadium.
Per the agreement the team signed in July, the Rays were responsible for any cost overrun. Since November, the team maintained that the delays’ push of the new stadium’s completion from 2028 to 2029 would increase the costs, which the Rays said they would not “be able to absorb alone,” in a Nov. 19 letter the team sent to the commissioners.
“There was no time limit for the bonds to be approved. The only time limit we had was March 31. So, when we delayed the vote in October, we were allowed to do that per the contract,” Pinellas County Commissioner Chris Latvala told The Crow’s Nest.
He said he found the team’s behavior following the delays “baffling.”
“They acted like they were the only people in Pinellas County that were suffering from hurricanes,” Latvala said.
According to St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, the Rays’ withdrawal from the deal wasn’t much of a surprise for city officials.
“While the decision of Tampa Bay Rays ownership to terminate the agreements for a new stadium and new development is a major disappointment, it is not unexpected,” Welch said in a statement shortly after the Rays’ announcement. “Nor is it the end of the Historic Gas Plant District story.”
St. Petersburg City Council Member Richie Floyd voted against the agreement last July, noting that it “was a direct transfer of wealth from the public sector to a team owned by a billionaire.” He says that the city is now in a good position to execute a more beneficial and community-centered redevelopment of the 86-acre Gas Plant District and Tropicana Field site.
“We can address infrastructure needs across the city if we don’t have to spend money on the stadium. We can invest in more creative public goods, things like childcare, grocery stores, social housing and traditional ones like parks, libraries, recreation centers,” Floyd told The Crow’s Nest. “We have a lot of money and a lot of bandwidth to do a lot of good things now.”
Local advocates stress that the city should take advantage of its newly cleaned slate after the Rays’ termination of the agreements.
On March 17, local advocacy groups including Faith in Florida, the St. Petersburg Tenant’s Union and Pinellas Democratic Socialists of America, held a press conference on the steps of St. Petersburg City Hall.
They reiterated their demands for “non-market housing” and honoring the unmet promises made to former residents of the Gas Plant District, the predominantly Black community displaced by the construction of Tropicana Field and St. Petersburg’s quest for a Major League Baseball (MLB) team.
“We really believe that if we were to fulfill the promises to those displaced and people facing displacement now, it would actually look like the municipal authorities taking ownership of those solutions and not vesting them in the whim and the will of a private corporation,” said Dylan Dames of Faith in Florida at the March 17 press conference.
There is also a proposition from Latvala for the Rays to reimburse county officials for the money expended during the course of negotiations and preparations.
The commissioner told the Tampa Bay Times that county staff are “gathering those costs.”
As for the Rays, there are pressures for Sternberg to sell the team.
The city has received offers from investors to purchase the Tropicana Field site, but as of right now, the city is focusing on delivering the Rays a fully-repaired ballpark by the 2026 MLB season so the team can finish out their lease ending in 2028.
The repairs will cost approximately $56 million. With a $25 million insurance policy and potential assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the city is responsible for a little over $22 million and voted to allocate those funds on April 3.
