'I'M THE ETERNAL OPTIMIST'
In an exclusive interview Mayor Rick Kriseman talks about his final year in office Tropicana Field and the Rays future in St. Petersburg

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 28, 2021

When Mayor Rick Kriseman addressed the media on Tuesday, under a gloomy sky with the Tropicana Field dome looming in the background, there was a subtle undertone.

Frustration.

Kriseman on Tuesday told reporters that he had rejected the Tampa Bay Rays' proposal for the 86-acre Trop site. The team asked the city to transfer 50 acres east of Booker Creek at no cost. Of that property, 14 acres would be set aside for a park, and the remainder would be home to a new stadium. The team also asked for 50 percent of the development proceeds for the remaining acreage of the Trop site west of Booker Creek. (Under its current lease, the team is entitled to half the development revenue to the site, as long as they're playing on the property.)

But Kriseman's tone on Tuesday wasn't solely the product of the Rays' most recent ask.

"There’s frustration that I did something the prior two mayors had not done, and that was to allow them to explore stadium options on both sides of the Bay," Kriseman told the Business Journal in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. "And there was no definitive outcome to that other than, 'We still don’t know what we’re doing.'"

In 2016, St. Pete entered a memorandum of understanding with the team to allow it to search Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for a site. While it identified a site near downtown Tampa and Ybor City, those negotiations fell apart by late 2018. In mid-2019, the team pitched the idea of splitting its season between Tampa Bay and Montreal, a concept to which Kriseman says he was initially "strongly opposed."

But after mulling it over, he arrived at what he thought was a compromise.

"I said, I’m willing to allow you to explore this concept if you can make it work. I’m just not willing to take money out of the general fund or capital improvement budget and spend it on the stadium," he said. "I have other things to contribute, like the infrastructure to the site. There are things we can do to help [them], but I’m not going to contribute out of our coffers for construction if it’s a part-time team."

The Rays issued a statement Tuesday that reiterated the team's commitment to the split-city concept.

“We remain curious to see the outcome of Mayor Kriseman’s RFP process," President Brian Auld said. "Our focus is on the Sister City concept and finding a site that will keep the Rays in Tampa Bay for generations to come. As always, community input, enthusiasm and participation are essential parts of this process.”

Also on Tuesday, the city unveiled seven responses to a request for proposals for the redevelopment of Tropicana Field, an 86-acre property in downtown St. Petersburg. See the proposals and renderings here.

The following interview with Kriseman has been edited for brevity and clarity.

First of all, how are you feeling? Did the proposals live up to your expectations?

You know, truthfully, if I had any concerns going in, it was that we had some provisions we had put in there — I think I used the word audacious. We expected a respondent to give us a response that includes and doesn’t include a stadium. We informed them that once we reach an agreement, there's a chance development could start immediately, but also a possibility it would not start until 2028.

We also had 21 guiding principles of development that were critical, from recognizing the historical significance of the land to equity issues to affordable housing. There was a lot in there, and so given all that, I truthfully wouldn’t have been surprised if we’d received only two or three responses. But we ended up getting seven — originally it was nine and we had to disqualify two — but seven responses, and just from the preliminary, quick review that I did, they're very significant, very detailed plans from very significant developers.

Are you still planning to hire a consultant to go through the proposals or is that off the table? [Kriseman had proposed hiring a consultant but removed the item from city council's agenda after council pushed back.]

It’s not completely off the table at this point, but I don’t have plans to bring it back to council. It was disappointing, and I tried to point this out — I think council was getting sidetracked and more caught up in the RFP versus what the item was about.

Do you wish you'd hired the consultant earlier in this process — bringing them on board to put the RFP together?

We felt very comfortable about the RFP we put together. There had been some other comments made about this being rushed, but we’ve been working on this since really 2015, 2016. We're five to six years into this, so we clearly did not rush to do this. The RFP took a long time to draft with a lot of community input. That was really important and remains really important, that the community continues to be engaged and their voice be heard.

When it comes to the Rays, you've often said you don't want to negotiate a stadium deal in the press. You went very public on Tuesday with your rejection of their proposal — what changed for you?

I think it was twofold. I didn’t want to get involved in releasing things until we had something significant, information-wise. And secondly, when they put what I felt was a firm offer on the table of what they were looking for to put a deal together — that’s significant. That’s the first time we had had anything like that.

It also had a direct impact on the RFP and the RFP process, because if I were to have said, OK, I’ll accept your offer, let’s put the agreement together — there are several steps that would have had to happen. I would have had to officially reject each of the seven RFPs that had been submitted because they were based on a minimum of 70 and a max of 86 acres. Based on the Rays' offer, I'd have had only 36 acres to put to bid which requires a very different response.

Because that property is in a community redevelopment area, the Rays offer would have to be considered an unsolicited offer which requires me, legally, to notice that I’d received an unsolicited offer and anyone who wants to bid can.

Was the Rays' offer one of the two disqualified responses?

No, it was not one of the nine. Right from the beginning, we’ve recommended that the Rays consider being a respondent. We've oftentimes said, 'Look at what Atlanta has done with their stadium, and they were the developer of that stadium and everything around it. You guys could do the same thing, and if that’s not something you want to do, then consider being a partner with a developer who does want to do it.'

You said something on Tuesday that really stood out — you made the point that back in 2008, when St. Petersburg was relatively unknown, the team seemed more interested in playing here then than it does now, despite all of the growth. Do you think about that a lot?

It just struck me as strange that in 2008 the team would want to make a commitment to stay here for 30 years, and we weren’t anything close to where we are today. Here we are 12 or 13 years later, and just in our average age we are a younger city, growing city, a vibrant city and somehow we’ve become less attractive. That doesn’t make sense.

You are term-limited and will be out of office in a matter of months. Has that changed your approach to this?

Not really. I am the mayor until the day before the new mayor is sworn in, and my intent is to work every day until that day.

When I got elected, I wanted to get clarification one way or another whether the Rays were going to stay or leave, but as least we would know. I think it’s better for everybody, for the Tampa Bay region, to have that clarity. I think it’s better for the Rays to avoid that uncertainty of becoming part of a political campaign — for them to have to deal with their fourth mayor? That they haven't been able to work things out with three mayors? [Discussions of a new stadium have been underway since 2008, beginning with Mayor Rick Baker, who left office in 2010. Mayor Bill Foster was in office from 2010 to 2014.]

Plus former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn during the negotiations with Tampa and Hillsborough County.

So it's possibly five mayors? I don’t know. I don’t think it benefits them. Would I like to see if I could resolve it? I’ll do what I can, but I also have to do what’s best for my residents and my constituents. Like I said, I don’t want to be in a position where I have to choose between the Rays and the community because to me it’s an easy decision. I'll choose the community.

Do you think the conversation around public contribution to stadiums is changing — that they're no longer viewed as these big economic development drivers, worthy of giant public subsidies?

I think that the way stadiums are constructed today is very different from 10 or 20 years ago. You look back, and they were being funded primarily with public dollars. It was cities and counties paying the vast majority — if not all of — the price of construction of stadiums. You look at the last several years, and the vast majority are being built by the owner, and if there are public dollars, those dollars are typically a much smaller portion of the overall construction cost.

The other reality is so many counties and cities are really hurting right now because of Covid. All of us have lost significant revenues, just like private businesses. I’ve got colleagues I know of, mayors in other cities, who've had to lay off 25 percent of the city workforce including police and fire. So how do you ask them, 'OK, while you’re laying off that firefighter, we need you to put in $500 million to build this new stadium?' I think that’s a bigger challenge today than it was in the past.

We've seen renderings and proposals of new stadiums, but we've never seen a financing plan. Have any of your negotiations with the Rays ever gotten to that point?

I’ve never been told, 'Here’s how much we are willing to put in toward the new stadium, and this is what we expect the stadium to cost, and this is the delta between those two that we’ve got to figure out.' That would be helpful.

If we're talking on the day after you leave office, what do you hope you can say was accomplished this year?

A deal with the Rays would be inked, a deal with the master developer of the Trop would be done and the residents would know that in a couple years, there’ll be permanent jobs, but immediately there will be construction jobs as redevelopment begins.

I still believe this is the place for them. I really do. And I’m not just saying that because I’m the mayor. I look at what’s happening in the city and what could potentially be developed around the city and how it would feed right into their fanbase and corporate support. I don’t know where else they could find that. Do you still think it's possible to strike a deal with the team? I’m the eternal optimist. I felt it was important when I ended my comments yesterday — I said I still would like to see the Rays here, and I’m willing to sit down and talk any time they want. We’re not going to make progress unless there’s an understanding that there are certain things that I cannot agree to, and one of them is giving up control of the land.