Dive Brief:
- With opening day two weeks away, Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays are pulling out of a $1.3 billion stadium deal with the city of St. Petersburg, Florida, according to a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter, by principal owner Stuart Sternberg.
- The team had previously voiced concerns about the deal, after votes to secure funding from the Pinellas County Commissioners were delayed as a result of economic uncertainty stemming from damage to the current stadium, Tropicana Field, sustained in Hurricane Milton when it made landfall Oct. 9, 2024.
- On Thursday, Sternberg called St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch and said the Rays would not meet the March 31 deadline to move forward on the new stadium deal, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Dive Insight:
The once-planned future home of the Rays would be a ballpark megaproject anchoring an even more massive $6.5 billion redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant property.
“While the decision of Tampa Bay Rays ownership to terminate the agreements for a new stadium and new development is a major disappointment, it is not unexpected. Nor is it the end of the Historic Gas Plant District story,” said Welch in a comment shared with Construction Dive.
The mayor’s statement said the city will continue to pursue using the Gas Plant District property to fulfill “40-year-old promises of economic development and opportunity made to the African-American community in St. Petersburg.”
Skanska USA Building had signed on as the owner’s representative for the design and construction of the new stadium. Skanska declined to comment on the matter.
In July 2024, Pinellas County commissioners approved public financing for the new stadium, which would have replaced Tropicana Field, where the Rays were still set to play until 2028. But then in October, county commissioners voted to delay the approval of bonds, claiming uncertainty after Milton tore off the Trop’s roof.
In a letter sent to the board in November, Rays team presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman said the delay had put construction in jeopardy, making its 2028 timeline for opening impossible. The delays proved to be too much for the team.
“After careful deliberation, we have concluded we cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment,” Sternberg said in his statement. “A series of events beginning in October that no one could have anticipated led to this difficult decision.”
The City of St. Petersburg is still working to restore the Trop so it can be used for the 2026 season, Sternberg said, and the team will play its home games at George M. Steinbrenner Field, the 11,000-seat spring training home of the New York Yankees in Tampa, Florida.
The Rays would play three more seasons at the Trop after it’s repaired, per their current contract with St. Petersburg, AP reported. After that, the Rays’ future home — both the physical stadium and indeed the city that they’d represent — is now unclear.
“As for the future of baseball in our city — if in the coming months a new owner, who demonstrates a commitment to honoring their agreements and our community priorities, emerges — we will consider a partnership to keep baseball in St. Pete,” Welch’s statement said. “But we will not put our city’s progress on hold as we await a collaborative and community-focused baseball partner.”
