Tampa Bay Rays to announce St. Petersburg stadium deal
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 18, 2023

The Tampa Bay Rays are expected to make an announcement Tuesday regarding the long-awaited deal to build a new baseball stadium in the Historic Gas Plant District.

The Tampa Bay Times first reported the news Monday morning. Sources confirmed to the Tampa Bay Business Journal an announcement was scheduled for Tuesday.

The Rays and have partnered with Houston-based development firm Hines to transform the 86-acre site Tropicana Field property into a mixed-use community surrounding a new ballpark. If a deal has been reached — and St. Petersburg City Council and Pinellas County Commissioners approve it — it will end the Rays' 15-plus-year search for a new stadium. The team's lease at the city-owned Tropicana Field expires in 2027, and it is entitled to half of the development revenue if it remains on the Trop property.

When complete, the redeveloped stadium district will include thousands of multifamily units, more than 1 million square feet of office space, hundreds of thousands of square feet of retail space and various entertainment venues, museums and green space.

Since 2007, the Rays have explored multiple sites in St. Petersburg and Tampa. Former Mayor Rick Kriseman entered a memorandum of understanding with the team in 2016 to allow it to search for stadium sites in Hillsborough County. While the team identified an Ybor City property, it was never able to come to terms with city or county leaders. Team owner Stu Sternberg also pitched the idea of splitting the season between Tampa Bay and Montreal, though Major League Baseball killed that proposal in early 2022.

Details shared by the Rays-Hines team in January show the new stadium will have 30,000 seats, a fixed dome roof and cost roughly $1.2 billion. Since St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch selected the group in January to develop the site, the team, the city and the county have been negotiating a term sheet. The county, city and team are expected to split the cost of the stadium, though details have not yet been revealed on how that split will occur.

The Rays stadium deal comes as Pinellas County attempts to prioritize funding requests throughout the county. The county’s bed tax will likely play a pivotal role in funding the stadium. However, the Rays are far from the only request for the funds.

This summer, county commissioners discussed the cost of nourishing the beaches — aka pumping fresh sand onto the shoreline every few years — which would also use bed tax funds. Tourism is the county’s largest economic driver and the price tag varied greatly depending on whether the county would move forward on its own or partner with other sources for the beaches.

The Philadelphia Phillies want to transform its Clearwater spring training facility into a year-round development and early costs are estimated to run as high as $300 million.

The Dali Museum in St. Petersburg also plans a $55 million expansion. In August, the county agreed to give the museum just over $25 million for the expansion with a caveat the museum could receive more once the county decides on how to fund the beach nourishment.