A stadium deal may finally be approved.
If all goes according to plan, the owner of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays franchise, Stu Sternberg is going to get a new ballpark in St. Petersburg, Florida as politicians are ready to give him public funding for a stadium-village. If politicians say yes, the long and winding road to getting a new stadium will end and shovels will be going into the ground very soon. The new stadium will be in the shadow of the present stadium which means that it is going to be away from Tampa and the eastern part of the market which contradicts the push for a new stadium to be placed in an area that is far more accessible for Rays’ customers. The stadium-village is a real estate deal that St. Petersburg business and political officials want. July 11th was the initial target date to get the deal done but elected officials wanted to make sure all the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed and an extra week was needed to lock down the document.
St. Petersburg is on the hook for $287.5 million of the stadium’s cost which is estimated to be $1.3 billion. The city will use revenues from downtown property taxes to pay off its portion of the bill. St. Petersburg’s taxpayers will pay another $142 million to build the roads and sewers that are needed for the stadium-village. Pinellas County officials plan to kick in $312.5 million and that money would come from tourist taxes on hotel users and short-term rentals. Rays’ ownership would be responsible to come up with $700 million along with all cost overruns. The present St. Petersburg stadium was built without the blessing of Major League Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth in the late 1980s. Various new stadium campaigns in the market failed. The stadium journey may finally be over.
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