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Money At Heart Of New Home

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By JOE HENDERSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 13, 2007

If you've made the drive from anywhere in New Tampa or eastern Hillsborough County to Tropicana Field, you probably concluded long ago that placing a baseball stadium in St. Pete, uh, stinks. That is, unless you give aesthetic points for the view of Ybor City while stopped cold on I-4, waiting for traffic to clear.

Yet, here they go again. The Rays are moving forward with a plan to spend hundreds of millions more on a new ballyard in downtown St. Pete. If it gets built - a massive "if" - big-league baseball will continue to be located at the extreme edge of the market. That doesn't seem too bright.

Under the circumstances though, there is no other choice the Rays can make.

Pinellas politicians might support a new park in downtown St. Pete, but they'd lay in front of the moving trucks to keep the Rays off the Howard Frankland Bridge.

Their lease at the Trop runs though 2027 and there is stiff medicine if the Rays try to skip town before then. It provides the city can sue, can apply for an injunction, and - here's a fun bit of legalese - "... in addition to an action for damages ..."

Well, we can stop right there.

The Rays likely would have to pay the $109 million still owed on the Trop along with that "action for damages." That clause alone is a humongous, crimson, flashing warning sign for anyone with fantasies of Carl Crawford patrolling left field in downtown Tampa.

Oh, and one small detail: The Rays have no place to land over here anyway. And won't.

Long Way To Opening Day

If the new stadium has to be in St. Pete, the site currently occupied by Al Lang Field is a fine choice. It is downtown, on the water, near shops and restaurants. If it gets built, it will look something like AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants play. That's cool.

What won't be cool are the months of June, July, August and September.

We ridiculed the Marlins for years about their nightly rain delays at open-air Dolphin Stadium. You appreciate that Teflon roof and air conditioning at the Trop when the 5 o'clock thunderclaps start rolling in during the summer. But the Rays say they've thought this through.

They were planning to announce their plans publicly next month until the story broke Friday. They haven't said much since. They briefed the head of St. Pete's city council Monday on their plans, but otherwise are doing a fine job of staying out of sight.

They want to take this before voters next November - St. Pete requires a referendum for any waterfront development - with an eye toward opening the new stadium in 2012. Ambitious, isn't it?

Presumably we'll eventually get an idea of how the Rays really plan to pay for this. Right now, their financing plan seems flimsy and this project dies quickly at the first mention of public money beyond the $60 million sales tax rebate program from the state.

Another Mistake?

We'll explore all that as the months go by. The bigger question now is whether the Rays are repeating a mistake.

It depends on the Rays. A new stadium in downtown St. Pete won't be any easier to get to than the Trop - perhaps not as easy - but people from Hillsborough will make the journey if the product is worth watching.

But if the Rays continue to trot out teams that win 60-something games, just stay in the Trop and save the money to pay Crawford, Scott Kazmir, B.J. Upton and Delmon Young. They'll be up for new contracts around the time the first pillars of a new stadium would be driven into the ground.

If the Rays keep that core and add to it as part of a long-range strategy to build the team while building shiny new digs, this could be the start of something really good for both sides of the Bay.

But if the stadium is just a plan to milk more money for luxury suites and the like for a bad product, it won't matter where it is built.

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