The Rays’ long-term home is in doubt after the team pulled out of plans for a $1.3 billion new stadium in St. Petersburg. The future is unclear, as St. Petersburg and Pinellas County officials have expressed frustration with Rays owner Stuart Sternberg.
John Romano and Colleen Wright of The Tampa Bay Times report that the Rays, within the past month, have floated the idea of renovating Tropicana Field beyond the roof repair. Under that plan, the team, city and county would contribute an equal sum — reportedly $200MM each — for large-scale renovations of their longtime home park. According to the report, the Rays would have agreed to a 10-year lease extension to remain at the Trop through 2038 in that scenario.
The city and county were not immediately keen on the idea. The Rays’ lease at Tropicana Field runs through 2028. It had initially been scheduled to expire in ’27, but it was extended by a year after hurricane damage left the stadium unplayable this season. The city, as lessor, is responsible for fixing the Trop after the hurricane ripped off its roof. The Rays are hopeful those repairs will be complete in time for the 2026 season. The city estimated the repair costs at $55.7MM.
Clearly, a $600MM renovation would go far beyond that. It makes little sense for anyone involved to make that commitment for three years, so it’d necessarily be paired with a lease extension. St. Petersburg mayor Ken Welch said yesterday that he “(has) no interest in working with this ownership group” after their decision to pull out of the stadium deal. Regarding the idea of a lease extension, he told The Tampa Bay Times that the city is “looking at a number of options but I don’t want to talk about, at this point, this notion of a 10- or 15-year extension at the Trop.”
Welch left the door open for reconsidering that idea in the future, saying he’d “talk with the council and with the community about the paths forward” once the Rays officially decline the current stadium deal. While the team has already made clear it’ll do so, the Rays need to sign an official termination letter on that project or wait for the bond approval to expire on March 31 (the date for the team to hit construction benchmarks to keep the public funding alive).
Rays team president Matt Silverman reiterated yesterday that the team is not for sale. He said they could reopen discussions with the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County after March 31. Silverman told Romano and Wright today that a lease extension at the Trop was also “one of many possibilities that has been discussed with the city and the county since the hurricanes.” The Rays have played at Tropicana Field since their founding in 1998. They will play this season at Tampa’s George M. Steinbrenner Field.
Just keeps running one con after another.
It’s definitely time to move out of that dump, and just start all over somewhere else. Good riddance.
This is so dumb
Doof – They said the same thing 23 years ago about renovating Fenway.
Why renovate a 90-year-old ballpark they said.
Well guess what, the renovations were a huge success.
Let’s see what specific improvements they are planning to make before throwing water on the idea.
Are you actually comparing Boston to Tampa and Fenway to The Trop?
He is comparing them. They’re both baseball stadiums. He isn’t necessarily equating the.m.
One is a cathedral of the sport and a historic landmark. The other is the complete opposite in almost every way.
Let’s compare the most iconic stadium in MLB history if not all of sports to a venue that’s never near capacity no matter what and in terms of actual quality of the stadium is already horrible and is on average an hour to two hours depending on traffic from the cities fanbase
The city of Tampa and MLB, and Tampa Rays fans are not happy with this ownership group.
Side note. Hal Steinbrenner said the deal with the Rays to play at his field is for 2025 only and he has no interest in extending it into 2026. Of course, we can assume there always a price where he’ll change his mind!
Well the county and Rays have both said the Trop will be ready by opening day 2026. So shouldn’t be a problem
problem is the Trop sucks
It isn’t a problem until it’s a problem.
A side note on your side note. If the Rays build a stadium in Tampa, they could force the Yankees to give up their minor league team in Tampa. Someone else posted that and I didn’t believe it, so I started digging and sure enough a MLB team has priority in any city over an existing minor league team. Steinbrenner should play nice if the repairs go long on the Trop or in 2029 he could be looking for a new home for the Tampa Tarpons and have an empty stadium that is just used for Spring Training.
I don’t think the Yankees would be too broke up about it. Although it is a Cadillac of a Spring Training facility. Sold out every game even though they charge twice as much for tickets compared to the 4 or 5 other teams in the Tampa area.
I think that Steinbrenner is too smart of a businessman to play hardball on the Rays extending their lease at the potential cost of moving an entire team out of Tampa.
I will preface this comment by saying I have done zero research on the subject:
But it might not really matter to Steinbrenner. The Tampa affiliate might have an independent, local owner. Historically, it hasn’t been uncommon for minor league affiliates to change cities. Florida is ripe with minor league quality stadiums. Moving probably wouldn’t be a huge deal. And I’m sure the league offers compensation to any “aggrieved” team.
The Tarpons are owned by the Yankees. They don’t get any compensation. Only a time frame to move. The biggest black eye for Hal would be that he would have to move a team that he owns from a stadium named after his father in the city where Hal himself lives year-round.
Websoulsurfer- I’d that’s technically true. You’d have to think it’d still not be wise to go against the ownership group of the most valuable team. There’s also a whole bunch of teams playing Spring ball in close proximity. And some are also very close to Miami on the side of the state.
Lord – I have a sneaking suspicion after this season the Rays WON’T WANT to play there again.
I was at Clover yesterday and Roger Dean today, in both instances fans gravitated to upper sections where there was some shade because they couldn’t stand the heat … and this is the most pleasant time of year in Florida.
Just wait and see what it will be like in GMS June thru September.
And there’s apparently not that much demand for tickets this year, because the prices weren’t even close to being doubled like some speculated.
Team wants to go 1/3 on a $600 million upgrade? Thats more than two years of payroll!!
Who on this green(ish) Earth is asking for more years at the Trop?
The thing that baffles me about this is that… the roof already failed once. Hurricanes are not getting fewer or less powerful anytime soon. It stands to reason that any extension is risking this exact thing happening again, and the longer the more certain of that possibility.
Leverage
Welch is willing to have the taxpayers of St Pete pay $55.7 million plus inevitable cost overruns to repair the Trop for the Rays to play there 3 years, but not $144.3 million more for 10 years.
Wasn’t he against the deal for the stadium from the start? I know he delayed the vote on funding until after the election. He is the one person most responsible for getting St Pete into this mess in the first place.
Should have read the article linked to. With the renovation the Rays offered to extend the lease through 2038, 10 years after the current lease expires. They would play in the Trop for 13 more years starting in 2026.
Welch is willing to use $55.7 million of taxpayer dollars to fix the Trop to have the Rays play there through 2028, but not $144.3 million more to have them play there through 2038?
$55.7M is an obligation as a landlord. $144.3M is a choice.
You are right about that. Under the lease the city both has to pay for repairs and provide payment for a place for the Rays to play in 2025. The Rays have no obligations other than to play in the stadium through 2028.
Making a choice to invest $144.3 million for 3.33 times as many years of taxes coming in as the $55.7 million will buy them is the decision they have to make. A decision that would also obligate the Rays to fork over $200 million to improve a property owned by the city,
I know Welch is hurting in the behind because the Rays called his bluff, but this seems like a no-brainer. Negotiate for things like redevelopment and maybe another 2-5 years on the lease but get this done. It is a better deal for the city than building the new stadium while giving away 66 acres of land.
Wrong. This is all on Stu.
And Welch didn’t delay anything; he’s the mayor of St. Peterburg. It was the Pinellas County Commission that delayed the vote because – God forbid – they needed to catch their breath after being hit by a hurricane. If you’re going to stump for Stu, at least know who you’re supposed to be picking on.
St. Pete wants to redevelop the Trop and the surrounding area, with or without the Rays. Stu gets a cut if he’s under lease when the redevelopment starts. This is Stu’s way of (a) cutting his obligation from the $700m he was supposed to put in on the new park to $200m while (b) the city and county between them save only $200m while Stu saves $500m while (c) Stu still gets his cut of the redevelopment because he’ll have a lease until 2038 while (d) Stu tries to look magnanimous.
A con. All it does is delay the inevitable: if a new park gets built in Tampa Bay, it will take a new owner to get it. Stu pulled the plug on the Ybor stadium 6 years ago; that deal wasn’t as far along as this one was, but he ended that discussion within a matter of months; think Tampa and Hillsborough County are going to throw money at him now? Think St. Pete and Pinellas will after this?
Cash out your billion-dollar profit and sell, Stu.
Sternberg is not a majority owner of the Rays, He would not get a billion profit. The most he could profit if it sold for $1.7 billion is just over $680 million. Still a nice chunk of change.
Ken Welch did delay a vote in the St Petersburg city council for funding. There was a great article about it in the Tampa Bay Times
tampabay.com/news/st-petersburg/2024/11/21/like-co…
Since you obviously don’t know anything about major building projects, let me fill you in. A 2 month delay can cost tens or even hundreds of millions and push construction back exponentially.
Let me give you an example. My company was contracted to do a 390k sq foot expansion for USPS in the LA area. Funding was delayed on the project by 3 months and we had to push back the project by a year. On a big project like that I can’t just start it the day it funds, I have planning months in advance. I have to move personnel and equipment into place. I have to line up suppliers. I cannot even start that process, one that can takes months, until the funding is in place.
When a delay happens on the buyers end, I have to then fill that funnel with another project or projects. I can’t just tell hundreds of employees, sorry, the funding was held up so you are out of a job until they get their act together. In the case of a huge one like the one I am talking about, we had to move up construction of a project that took 9 months to complete and could have taken a year depending on a large number of factors.
So when the Rays say that the delays caused by Welch delaying the vote in the St Pete city gov’t and Chris Latvala and Eggers delaying the vote in the Pinellas County Commission would cost hundreds of millions and would make it impossible to be completed by opening day 2028, they were not lying. I doubt it was the $260 million figure floated by the media, but a 10% cost increase is common on major builds when there is a delay like that.
Why should the Rays be forced to eat all of that cost when it was the politicians that caused the delay and the increased costs? I would have backed out too.
Sternberg and Hines get nothing by backing out. They lose out on the redevelopment deal. That is how bad the deal with the city was for the team and the developer. They would rather have nothing than the increased costs caused by Welch and Latvala/Eggers delaying the vote for funding.
If they sign a deal to renovate the Trop everyone saves money and they can renegotiate the redevelopment deal if necessary.
No matter how much you fix the trop up, it’s still going to be a terrible stadium in a bad location. There is no scenario where staying there another 10 years makes sense for the team.
Or the city. I don’t even know why they are fixing the Trop. If the city wants leverage on Sternberg, just tear it down.
Don, too late for that. The city is legally obligated to repair it once the engineers they hired said it was possible.
There are obligations and then there are obligations. Lawsuits can be drug out forever. The city could slow walk the “repairs” until Stu finally yells “uncle” and agrees to sell.
It’s dirty pool, but I doubt Sternberg would be above it if the shoe was on the other foot.
The city can slow walk repairs as much as they like. They still have to pay to have a field available for the Rays to play in for the 2026 season. The city is the ones paying for the Rays to play at Steinbrenner Field in 2025. They were angry about having to pay for the Rays to play somewhere they don’t reap any tax benefits which is part of this whole situation.
Sternberg is not going to sell. He has made that pretty clear. Unlike McCourt, he is not bankrupt and going through a nasty divorce. The other owners can apply pressure, but at the end of the day they have to play by the same rules they have set for all the other franchises in the sport. Sternberg has done nothing that could be used as a reason to force him to sell.
No city council people would allow that. You open up the city council and mayor to law suits
If the owners take away his revenue sharing like they did to John Fisher (no revenue sharing without a stadium deal by a certain date), and it’s clear Stu can’t get someone in TB to build him one, he’s left with less income, a team likely to struggle more, and a bad team playing in a bad park. His asset loses value from it’s peak. Now he’s losing money in two directions.
And it seems doubtful the owners are going to let him move; the potential sites are all smaller markets than TB, and if he couldn’t make it work there, why would he be handed an even smaller market? And why give up potential expansion money because Stu burned every bridge in TB?
Would that make him sell?
The other owners can only do that by making changes to the CBA. Not sure that the MLBPA would agree to that as a punitive measure just to force him to sell because the Rays have been spending north of $100 million every year since 2022.
The problem for the Rays has always been the location of the ballpark. It is in an industrial area. Pretty grim. Not much to do there other than go to the game, although in recent years a few more places have come in. It needs redevelopment and the city has been promising that for 40 years, but its not going to happen without a big draw like a baseball or soccer team in the area.
It’s also really hard to get to. Unless you live in central Pinellas county you are going to find its more than an hour’s drive on any weekday. If you have to cross a bridge to get there and there is a wreck, an almost daily reality, it can take 2 hours to get there.
For Angels games you can come all the way from San Diego and get here in 90 minutes. That seems to be about average for getting to a Rays game from anywhere other than Pinellas county south of Clearwater.
The ballpark they have was not really designed for baseball. It was a multi-purpose facility and it stinks for baseball.
The Rays don’t have to relocate to another state, they just need to move closer to the majority of the population in the Tampa Bay area. If you have been to a Buccaneers game you know how good of an area that would be to have a ballpark. Easy access. Multiple highways. Close to the airport. Could build right across the street from Steinbrenner Stadium where they are playing this year in the north parking lot of Raymond James then build a multi-story parking structure to the east across Hines by the Bucs training facility. Just have to be mindful of not scheduling baseball and football games on the same day in August and September. Other cities have a similarly situated stadiums and do great with that.
I feel bad for the dozens of Rays fans having to deal with this
That many?
The Rays are usually a competitive, fun team each year. Sorry to see this team dealing with this tough situation. Hope they don’t move, but it doesn’t look good.
The only proper “renovation” is burning that dump to the ground.
Indeeddownderelikedat!!!
Move to Jacksonville
The armpit of the universe. Rather move to Fresno than Jacksonville.
I think they are probably trying to make this untenable at this point. Montreal will have their renovations complete by the middle of 2026, they will posture, play hardball, and try to burn whatever bridge is left, hope that MLB doesn’t have enough balls to force a sale. MLB wants this settled so they can move on to expansion. I am sure they would like Montreal in the bidding for an expansion team, but Orlando may be leverage enough to move things along.
Montreal will have renovations on Olympic Stadium completed in 2028. kitchener.citynews.ca/2024/02/05/quebec-government…
I don’t think MLB will ever return to Montreal that ship has sailed .I’m also not convinced that their interested in expansion. Some fans are to be sure. Just not sure the league as a whole is..
I’m confused. the rays floated the renovations to Tampa bay mayor or st Petersburg mayor or Ybor city mayor and st Petersburg mayor chimed in and said no?