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Will Voters Let Rays Change Waterfront?

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By CARLOS MONCADA, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 16, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - For decades, people have jealously guarded the downtown waterfront from development, making the chain of parkland along Tampa Bay the city's most cherished public asset.

"You see all this, and it's just beautiful," Tim Nicholson said while standing at the water's edge in Vinoy Park on Thursday afternoon, watching a sailboat drift by.

Now, a plan by the Tampa Bay Rays to build a downtown waterfront stadium could have Nicholson and the rest of St. Petersburg's electorate deciding - for the third time in five years - whether to encroach on the waterfront.

The city charter gives voters the final say on the sale or long-term lease of downtown waterfront property. Last year, voters overwhelmingly agreed to allow the Salvador Dali Museum to build a new home closer to the water, next to the renovated Mahaffey Theater.

But in 2003, voters soundly rejected a proposal to turn more than 100 acres of waterfront land occupied by Albert Whitted Municipal Airport into a public park, opting to keep the airport open "forever."

The Rays plan to ask the city council to put a referendum on the November 2008 ballot on whether to build a $450 million, 35,000-seat, open-air ballpark at the site of Al Lang Field, the team's current spring training home.

Efforts to preserve the waterfront began shortly after St. Petersburg was incorporated in 1903. At the time, city forefathers decided to reclaim a decaying and neglected shoreline of rotting piers and old boats at the urging of the city's Board of Trade.

Today, St. Petersburg's waterfront, although not pristine, stands in sharp contrast to Tampa's, which is crowded with the wharves, warehouses, dry docks and tank farms of a working port.

Considered one of the nation's largest public waterfronts, it is protected by nearly five miles of parkland, from Coffee Pot Bayou south to Bayboro Harbor, and plays host to 350 events a year, ranging from boat shows to art festivals.

The picturesque venue also has proved a powerful economic engine, helping to transform a once-sleepy business district into a lively mix of shops, restaurants, offices, entertainment venues and high-end residences.

"I think people are naturally protective of the public waterfront and maybe a little suspicious of any proposal that makes large-scale changes," said historian Ray Arsenault, a professor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Arsenault recalled a 1984 referendum to rebuild the waterfront, called "Pier Park," that voters soundly rejected.

"People are pretty proud of the downtown now, and they're accustomed to pretty serious change," Arsenault said. "But not so much on the waterfront. I think a lot of people make a distinction between the waterfront and the rest of downtown."

In some respects, a stadium referendum would right the city council's wrong in 1986, when it voted to use tax money to build a $138 million baseball stadium despite public calls to put the matter on the ballot, said Darryl Paulson, a professor of government at USF. "I think it's probably one of the largest blunders of any city council anywhere in the country," Paulson said.

The Rays plan to pay $150 million of the stadium cost and to ask the state Legislature for a $60 million sales-tax rebate. The team hopes money from the sale of the 70-acre Tropicana Field site would make up part of the remaining $240 million. Team officials have not said how they would pay for the cost difference or any overruns.

The Rays can't expect support yet from Nicholson, a nurse who was walking his cocker spaniel Serendipity.

"To me it's a waste of money," he said. "I would think there are better places to build a stadium."

Despite the city's reputation for zealously protecting its bayfront, public access and water views have diminished over the past several decades with expansions of buildings such as the St. Petersburg Yacht Club and the museums of history and fine arts, said Tim Baker, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association.

He likes the idea of turning the parking lot at Al Lang Field into a park, as the Rays stadium plans have proposed. Baker's group was unsuccessful in persuading the city council to include Al Lang Field in a more protective category when it adopted revised land development regulations in September.

Although a waterfront baseball stadium sounds attractive, several questions remain, primarily about financing and parking, Baker said.

"I hate to see events where people stay away from downtown," he said. "They say, 'Oh, there's a baseball game; it'll be too crowded. We won't go there.' We get that with the Grand Prix."

The referendum's outcome also could hinge on "what people may think is going on behind the scenes," Arsenault said.

Arsenault pointed to the failed 2003 ballot question to replace the airport with a waterfront park, a measure he supported. He blamed the defeat on airport supporters' claims that it was a subterfuge for building high-rise condominiums there.

Arsenault suspects that many voters' "gut feeling" will tell them not to support replacing Al Lang Field, at Progress Energy Park, with a much larger stadium.

"My sense is they just won't want a major change like this, regardless of the details," he said.

Reporter Carlos Moncada can be reached at (727) 451-2333 or cmoncada@tampatrib.com.

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