Peters wants to know by Sunday.
Come Sunday, the Pinellas County Commission wants the owners of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays franchise to tell them what they intend to do with the planned St. Petersburg stadium. After Hurricane Milton destroyed the roof of the St. Petersburg stadium that was the home of Rays’ baseball, the planned stadium became a problem. Pinellas County Commission Chairperson Kathleen Peters sent a letter to the Tampa Bay Rays’ franchise ownership requesting written answers regarding the business future by December 1st. The Rays business president Brian Auld told the St. Petersburg City Council that he “can’t continue to move forward based on what I’ve seen from the county.” St. Petersburg elected officials are not putting up money to fix the Rays’ stadium which was scheduled to be closed in 2027. Neither St. Petersburg elected officials nor the Pinellas County Commissioners have provided funding to back bonds that would be issued for the construction of the stadium and a planned retail, residential and entertainment district. It is possible that the district could be built without the stadium.
Tampa politicians seem to be willing to sit back and let the political process play out. But some politicians on the Tampa side of the bay claim they are ready to sit down with Rays’ management and work on a stadium deal. St. Petersburg was planning to spend $287.5 million to partially pay the bill of the $1.3 billion stadium. St. Petersburg also planned to kick in another $142 million for infrastructure including building roads and constructing sewer lines and the city was planning to sell about 65 acres of public land well below the appraised value for $105 million for the property. Pinellas County was planning to back bonds for the project by using tourist tax money. Come Sunday Pinellas County Commissioners want to know what Rays’ ownership wants to do.
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Rays business president Brian Auld.
