Timeline for Rays deal stays hazy, while Pinellas officials wait
When officials announced a preliminary agreement for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium in downtown St. Petersburg last September, they described the next steps as unfolding rapidly.
City and Pinellas County officials would likely vote on a deal in early 2024, the plan went, so that construction could begin quickly enough for the Rays to have a new stadium come opening day 2028. St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said at the time that he was “very optimistic about us moving forward very quickly.”
But with early 2024 well underway, that timeline has only gotten fuzzier. On Tuesday, County Administrator Barry Burton told commissioners that he had no projected timeline for when he’d have an ironed-out deal for them to discuss. His comments came a few weeks after city officials acknowledged that a City Council vote won’t happen until at least May.
“It’s very complicated,” Burton said during Tuesday’s County Commission meeting. “We’re in the thick of it. But I don’t have a timeline.”
Burton said attorneys have been reviewing the details of the proposal and that Rob Gerdes, the city administrator who has been St. Petersburg’s lead negotiator on the deal, set a deadline for documents to be ready in three weeks.
Officials from the city, the county and the Rays are meeting with their lawyers Wednesday at Tropicana Field “to try to make progress on final business points,” Gerdes wrote in a text message obtained in a public records request by the Tampa Bay Times. The message was sent to Burton, Rays co-president Matt Silverman and Inner Circle Sports consultant David Abrams. Gerdes did not return requests for comment.
Spokesperson Erica Riggins said in an emailed statement that the Gas Plant District redevelopment is a priority for the city and “city staff are working with a sense of urgency to ensure all documents are ready for the next phase of formal review.”
“We embrace the opportunity to bring this transformational project to fruition for St. Pete residents and generations to come,” she wrote in an email.
Once those documents are ready, Burton said, he can start briefing county commissioners on the terms of the deal, going deeper than the nonbinding term sheet that was publicly released in October.
“I assure you that we’ll have individual discussions on those before we bring them up publicly,” he told commissioners. “But the devil’s in the detail, and we’re in the heart of the detail right now.”
County Commissioner Janet Long, a proponent of the deal as its been publicly described, asked about a timeline in Tuesday’s meeting, where she noted she’d met with Rays leaders recently and said that “time is not our friend on this issue.” Rays co-president Brian Auld has said that the financial details projected in the team’s proposal are dependent on construction starting this fall.
“Just because I brought it up today doesn’t mean you won’t hear me bring it up again probably every time we meet,” Long said in an interview later Tuesday. “I just don’t want this to languish. It’s not good for the community, it’s not good for the Rays, it’s not good for the developer.”
County officials will ultimately vote on whether to spend tourist tax dollars — proposed at $312.5 million in the term sheet, for a projected actual cost of $586.8 million after debt services — on a new ballpark itself. The proposal is more complex for St. Petersburg, where City Council members will vote on a deal for a new stadium and for the surrounding Historic Gas Plant redevelopment planned by the Rays’ development partner, Hines. The term sheet calls for the city to contribute $287.5 million toward the ballpark plus up to $130 million toward infrastructure for the redevelopment, with its total expenses projected at $703.9 million after interest.
The Rays would pay for the rest of the stadium, a cost pegged at $700 million in the term sheet, plus any cost overruns on the construction for the stadium.
Other county commissioners said Tuesday that while they’re eager for more details — some of which will likely emerge publicly at City Council meetings in April — they also don’t want to rush a decision of this magnitude.
Commissioner Dave Eggers said he’s hopeful they’ll reach a resolution “this calendar year.” Brian Scott, the commission’s vice-chairperson, said he’s aware of the Rays’ desire to open a new stadium in 2028 but doesn’t want that timeline to preclude taking time for legal diligence and healthy public debate over the deal.
“At least from my perspective, if that wasn’t until the ’29 season, how much of a deal-breaker is that?” he said in an interview. “I don’t want to push it there unnecessarily, but if it took the remainder of this year to get the documents right and get everyone to the right comfort level — I mean, we’re talking about a 30-year investment here.”
