TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
Rays Skip State Help On Stadium
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Published: January 8, 2008
ST. PETERSBURG - The Tampa Bay Rays didn't need to conduct a wide-ranging survey of Florida legislators to determine that a state subsidy for their proposed $450 million stadium would be a tough sell.
The state's dire financial situation spoke for itself, prompting the team to drop its planned bid for $60 million in sales-tax rebates. Rays senior vice president Michael Kalt said Monday that the team will move ahead with the stadium project without seeking the state funding, which would have contributed about $30 million toward the stadium project in present-day value.
"When we announced the project, we said it was something we'd consider as a potential funding source," Kalt said. "It became a given over the last couple months the way it looks with the Legislature and the budget situation in Tallahassee that it's probably best not to spend a lot of time focused on that in particular."
Revenue shortfalls prompted the Legislature to cut $1.1 billion from the current budget during an October special session and lawmakers indicated that move might only represent the beginning of the sacrifices.
State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said Monday he expects the state to be facing a $2 billion shortfall in the upcoming session as sales tax revenue continues to decline.
"Right now we have a very tight budget," Fasano said. "Our economy is slowing down and we don't have the revenue that we've had in past. I believe the Rays got the message."
Fasano said he hadn't spoken directly to any Rays officials about the proposal for a waterfront ballpark in downtown St. Petersburg, but he and the bulk of the Pinellas County legislative delegation "made it clear that any tax breaks for any sports franchise in the state of Florida were not going to happen anytime soon."
With state budget cuts looming across the board, the team didn't feel it was necessary to canvass legislators before deciding against pressing the issue.
"It seemed like there really wasn't a tremendous amount of appetite for that sort of legislation this year," Kalt said.
The absence of state funding won't kill the stadium project or force the Rays to significantly alter their design of the park, Kalt said.
"Obviously it's another $30 million we'll have to find somewhere or reduce in the program, but we're not going to change what we're looking at," he said. "We're not going to start making radical changes in our program based on a funding source that was never projected to be more than 5-7 percent of the funding."
The Rays are counting on revenue from the sale and redevelopment of the Tropicana Field site to pay the bulk of the costs for the new stadium, but they still don't have a firm grasp on how much money will be generated.
"Until that happens, we're in a little bit of a holding pattern," Kalt said, "because that's what the whole thing is going to hinge on, the financing coming out of the Trop site."
The team and the city of St. Petersburg will hold a public meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Tropicana Field to discuss possibilities for redeveloping the existing stadium site. Beyond that, Kalt said the team has meetings scheduled with about 60 neighborhood associations within the next two months to lay out its plans and seek comment from the public.
Reporter Marc Lancaster can be reached at (813) 259-7227 or mlancaster@tampatrib.com.
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Reader Comments
Posted by ( LC ) on January 8, 2008 at 8:36 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Thank You Jesus! I would be so pissed off if they made tax payers pay for it. A new stadium is the LAST thing we NEED!
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Posted by ( BlackHorseman ) on January 9, 2008 at 9:34 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Yeah but this is the next move for these guys. Due to this they will spend no extra money in players and in 2 years or so they will threaten to move the team.
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Posted by ( befuddled_in_Tampa ) on January 22, 2008 at 5:18 a.m. ( Suggest removal )
Don't believe it.
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