It is up to Pinellas County now.
It is getting late in the St. Petersburg, Florida stadium game. Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays’ ownership still wants to use a new stadium in St. Petersburg. The St. Petersburg City Council voted to approve $287.5 million in bonds that are necessary to finance the $1.3 billion stadium. St. Petersburg also plans to kick in another $142 million for infrastructure including building roads and constructing sewer lines and the city plans to sell about 65 acres of public land well below the appraised value for $105 million for the property. But there still is one party to the deal that needs to sign off on the agreement and that is the Pinellas County Commission and that might be the toughest group to convince that a new stadium-village for St. Petersburg is a necessity for the baseball team and to energize the local economy. The Pinellas County Commission has not decided if it wants to issue bonds that would be paid for by tourist taxes that can’t be spent on such things as hurricane recovery.
Pinellas County commissioners have until March to get the funding together for the bonds and there is still time for the Rays’ ownership and Pinellas County officials to work out a funding package if the Pinellas County commissioners say no to issue bonds to cover the county’s portion of the stadium-village development, which is $312.5 million on December 17th. But that might not be the end of it. The Rays’ ownership claims it may not have the money to cover cost overruns if the stadium is not built by the beginning of 2028. The question of what to do with St. Petersburg’s damaged domed stadium has not been solved. Stadium projects are always about money and the Rays’ stadium project is no different than any other stadium project.
Planned Rays’ stadium