Today, I was reading a recent editorial in the Tampa Bay Times that essentially told the newly elected politicians to stop asking questions about the Tampa Bay Rays new ballpark deal. The Times wants all local leaders, newly elected or not, to approve the deal because the previous administration agreed to it.
For those who aren’t keeping up with this story, here is the short version. Last year, the Tampa Bay Rays and local leaders agreed on a $1.5 billion, 30,000-seat dome-roofed ballpark that the team hoped would be ready for the 2028 season. The city of St. Petersburg would be contributing $287.5 million in taxpayer dollars, while the county would be giving $312.5 million taxpayer dollars from tourist taxes. The team is expected to pick up the rest, along with any cost overruns.
More importantly, the deal was agreed upon in large part because of the off-the-field promises made in the agreement. When the current ballpark was built, the mostly black neighborhood was forced to move with no say in it. Although given promises by the city for financial help, those promises were never fulfilled. However, this current deal is expected to be completed with the notion of “fulfilling the promises made 40 years ago”. That includes thousands of new apartments and a Black history museum. Since this agreement, everyone has been trying to move forward with all the documents and agreements between city/county/team officials that are needed.
Meanwhile, several weeks ago, Hurricane Milton hit the Tampa Bay region and caused at least $55 million dollars worth of damage to the current ballpark. This also meant that the two main sources of finances for the new ballpark would now be faced with significant new costs for “vast amounts of debris removal, damage to parks and infrastructure”. The combination of the Hurricane and the size of the Rays deal meant that agreements and meetings with the county had to be pushed back many weeks/months. Then the recent election happened, and various county leaders were either beaten or retired.
Suddenly, the new makeup of the county commission had two new members who did not like the agreement between the team and the city/county. This means that they do have the power to scuttle the deal. So they have begun asking new questions or stating their dislike of the deal. Now, there is uncertainty about whether the county this week will agree to release bonds needed to fund the ballpark construction.
This all has apparently pissed off the Tampa Bay Times. Let’s look into the reasons given by the Times:
- They start off the editorial by claiming that this deal was “already cleared for takeoff” and therefore should be honored by new county officials.
- The Times goes on to state that if the county votes against the bonds, this would cause a “disaster for the county’s economic development, a self-inflicted wound that could fester for years”.
- The deal includes “consideration of many issues” and was debated for “years and included bids from multiple developers”.
- The team has spent “years of building community buy in through an open and transparent process”.
- The new officials should not stop this deal because “this is not the time to re-litigate or renegotiate” the ballpark deal because “that time has passed”.
- Pulling out of the agreement would be a “bad look” for the area and would “send all the wrong signals to any business that might want to move to Pinellas County”.
- Lastly, if this deal falls through, other city officials will “bring it up behind closed doors anytime their county or city competes with Pinellas for a new project”.
Where to begin. Let’s start with where they started.
This deal was already cleared for takeoff? Done? Says who? I see article after article discussing city/county meetings about this deal. I also see them voting in these meetings. Some meetings involve city officials asking or making significant changes to the deal. That tells me that this isn’t some done deal. If we look at news of the deal, I see one newspaper noting how the ballpark deal “still has some political hurdles to clear on funding and government approvals”. Again, why is this a done deal when the so-called hurdles are still left? If this deal fell apart, how exactly would it be an economic disaster for the area? The Times writes this yet never explains how or why this would happen. I have a hard time seeing how the area would fall apart, considering how much the local governments will be able to keep for tourism and general fund issues. Just because this deal took many, many years to put together does not make it a good deal. Furthermore, almost all of the previous deals were entirely different from this one (such as the Ybor ballpark). Does it really matter if a deal took 1 year or 10 years?
When I saw the Times write that this deal was a “transparent process”, I actually laughed out loud. Transparent? Everyone, outside the team, knew little to nothing about this deal until the very end. A few months after the deal was announced in 2023, the Tampa Bay Times wrote an article that had this line in it: “After months of secret negotiations, the release Thursday of finance projections…”.
In March of this year, the team was actively trying to get both the city and county to approve the ballpark deal. However, both Pinellas County commissioners and St. Pete City Council members seemed to say the same thing…they needed actual answers. Pinellas County Commissioner Dave Eggers issued a statement stating that while hopeful of a deal, “there is more to learn about the proposed terms and conditions and assumptions of risks”. Pinellas County Commissioner Charlie Justice was supportive of the deal but admitted that “There are questions that remain”. St. Pete City Council Member Lisset Hanewicz was straight to the point in expressing “concerns about the deal and pushed for transparency”. Why would she say that? Well, Lisset Hanewicz mentioned in the article how the devil was in the details for an agreement like this and that city leaders STILL DIDN’T HAVE THE FINAL AGREEMENT…and the team wanted approval of the deal.
If you are asking yourself why anyone would promote something that they haven’t fully seen/reviewed, St. Pete Catalyst also expresses concern about why anyone in power would do that:
“We are concerned that several elected officials have expressed their support for this exceptionally large financial expenditure before seeing the final deal or hearing from their constituents.” — St. Pete Catalyst, 2013
A few months later, the team set a deadline and expected the city and county to approve the deal before the deadline. But local leaders still had issues with language in the agreement. Specifically, St. Petersburg City Council members were not happy about the “flexible language around promises to bring affordable housing to the area and the lack of transparency on the Tampa Bay Rays partnership agreements”. One council member was troubled at how the language of the affordable housing section was structured in a way that the team could get out of doing it if they didn’t receive additional subsidies to their liking. Another Council member brought up how funny she found it that the Rays decided to give a community benefits package worth $50 million. Why did she find it funny? The City had given the team a $50 million dollar discount on the new land for the ballpark. I thought it was brilliant when she followed this up with, “who’s actually paying for that?” Haneowizcz said.
Do you even want me to go into the lack of transparency on the previous deal between the Rays and Ybor? Do we need to go over when four of seven Hillsborough commissioners expressed opposition to financing a Rays ballpark because of a “lack of transparency in stadium negotiations”?
The Times article also claims that people will say bad things about this area in private rooms and that now is not the time to argue over this deal. Again, how could anyone say that now is not the time to discuss this deal? The public was never involved when this deal got started, so when exactly are we expected to analysis the agreement? City leaders never had the final agreement until the very, very end, so the public had even less information. Remember, there are city leaders who did not have any details of the ballpark agreement until just a few months ago.
Lastly, let’s talk about this African American museum that the team CONSTANTLY brings up when ballpark agreement talks are occurring. Well, after the ballpark was approved by the city, you began to see articles like this…“Funding to open Black history museum with Rays stadium is uncertain” or “St. Pete may reject spending $10m on Black history museum used to justify $1B Rays stadium deal”. To be fair, the team is not 100% at fault for this issue. I understand that the St. Pete/Clearwater county tourism bureau is the one who denied this request. But when the team uses this museum as, basically, one of the biggest selling points, it does bring up questions about the entire deal in general.