X-Rays Spex

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Hot takes and reactions to the Rays stadium renderings and plans

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(Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

The reactions to the Tampa Bay Rays stadium announcement on Tuesday have ranged from positive and enthusiastic, to skeptical, lukewarm and disapproving. While the plans themselves paint the picture of an innovative and ambitious community center-cum-stadium, the $892-million price tag is proving to be a non-starter for many who feel as though they are doomed for the coal pit, much like those who live four-and-one-half hours south of the greater Tampa Bay area. Paging Jeffrey Loria.

Here are what a few writers and reporters are saying about the stadium renderings.

Ray Roa of Creative Loafing

Moments after the press conference, Ray Roa (Creative Loafing Tampa) gave his account of the meeting. While most of the article is a standard account of the meeting, Roa brought up a point that likely slipped beneath the radar of stadium proponents and opponents alike.

What no one in the press conference really talked about was the way that Ybor’s ongoing, seemingly inevitable, transformation will change the lives of business owners who don’t own the titles of the buildings they operate out of, writes Roa. The district has already seen the extermination of beloved establishments like Czar (future home of a boutique hotel) and long-running music venue New World Brewery (bulldozed to make way for condos), and as property values rise the question about what’s authentically Ybor continues to come up. Is it the coffee shops? Cigar joints? Live music venues? What happens when landlords cash out and more beloved Ybor City haunts have to find new homes?

Granted the punk/alternative/whatever music community is not something that most people care about, however, Roa intimated the specters the “G word,” gentrification. If the segment by WTSP 10 News (below)speaks to anything, the potential of a stadium has already spurred investors into action before a funding plan has even come to fruition.

To be clear, redevelopment is not a bad thing, nor is attempting to clean up neighborhoods. But doing so in an unsustainable manner, at the expense of the marginalized as well as small business owners, tends to benefit the investors most. It wipes the slate of a historically diverse community, not to mention the local flavor and authenticity that was so attractive to the team in the first place.

Furthermore, while the geographic region will survive, people’s access to it — by way of affordable housing or the ability to live without excessive taxes and fees — will be limited. People in a lower economic bracket, who live in and around the proposed stadium site, will undoubtedly be priced out out of their homes. Ticket prices also will increase, limiting those who can attend ball games.

It happened in St. Petersburg when Tropicana Field (then the Pinellas Suncoast Dome) was constructed almost 30 years ago, something that is just now being addressed. For current precedent, one need only to look at Seminole Heights, Tampa Heights, or Central Avenue — from the water to the Grand Central District (in St. Petersburg) — as proof. Countless families have been priced out of their homes in those areas, while business owners have been forced to move to more affordable locations in the name of progress.

More directly, the Tampa Park Apartments, just stones throw from the proposed stadium site, is on the verge of losing HUD funding. Land developers are already licking their chops to build bars, restaurants, and housing.

The federal government has now come to the same conclusion after a recent inspection found other units with infestations, damaged doors and windows that don’t open, writes Christopher O’Donnell (Tampa Bay Times). It is the fourth time the privately-owned complex has failed an inspection in the past four years.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, this week sent letters to about 170 families informing them they will be moved out of the complex and into Section 8 housing beginning in August. It also informed the owners that it will no longer subsidize rents in more than half of the complex’s roughly 370 apartments.

That could jeopardize its future. More than half of its occupants receive subsidies worth up to two-thirds of their rent. Now it will have to attract many more families willing and able to afford the full rent.

The loss of those tenants may also reignite speculation about the 23-acre property once touted as a potential site for a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark. Nestled between Ybor City and downtown Tampa, it is barely a home run away from the site the Rays eventually chose, which could entice developers looking to build bars, restaurants and residential development to cater to fans.

While the Tampa Housing Authority maintains the families that currently live in the Tampa Park Apartments will end up in better housing, O’Donnell writes of an Eats Tampa activist named Connie Burton, who is skeptical.

HUD’s decision could result in the loss of one of the few places where low-income families can live close to downtown, Burton said.

“If they lose half of their subsidy now it becomes a financial drain on the owner,” she said. “That will force the hand of the owner to eventually sell.”

Burton noted that several Tampa redevelopment projects have meant thousands of residents, mostly poor and black, have been moved farther away from downtown and from jobs.

“Most of those people, if they can find housing in the city, it won’t be affordable,” Burton said. “Where will all these people go?”

Yes, “blighted areas” need to be addressed, but only in a way that gives the inhabitants of those areas a stab at reaping the sustainable economic growth. An increased tax base, as well as other undesirable effects of rapid redevelopment, will have the opposite effect on the neighborhood the team hopes to bolster with its presence.

Joe Henderson of the Tampa Bay Times

Moving on, Joe Henderson (Tampa Bay Times) wrote an article titled Road to new Rays stadium will be a wild ride, where he opines that despite the monumental feat ahead of them over the next 5-1/2 months, that a stadium deal will be completed is an inevitability. On the surface the story appears to be an innocuous rallying cry for champions of the effort to build a stadium, yet beneath the surface it reads, at times, like brazen advocacy for a deal on the backs of taxpayers.

The Tampa Bay Times also explicitly stated that taxpayers should be on the hook for a new stadium in an opinion piece published Thursday.

Jon Taylor of Sports Illustrated

Finally, in an article dubbed The Rays’ Proposed New Stadium Looks Beautiful, But Who Is Going to Pay for It?, Jon Taylor (Sports Illustrated) argues that while most can agree that the Rays need a new stadium, the new proposal is a great start, but the public should not foot the bill. As Taylor writes,

…There’s only one problem with that vision: Nobody knows who’s going to pay for it.

That’s going to be the question hanging over the franchise as it seeks to go from the old and unpleasant Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg to a gleaming new edifice in Ybor City in downtown Tampa. But with a potential price tag of nearly a billion dollars, at least some of the cost of that relocation will fall on the residents of Tampa—unfairly, undeservedly and, if it comes to pass, disastrously so.

This is a battle that’s played out repeatedly over the last decade, and one that cities don’t win. Just in that span, taxpayers in Washington, D.C., New York (twice), Minneapolis, Miami and Atlanta have forked over hundreds of millions of dollars through deals made by local governments in exchange for ballparks. Money that could have been spent on improving local infrastructure or better salaries for civil servants instead went to franchises worth billions and their absurdly rich owners, all of whom cried poor when the time came to pay.

Will Tampa be next? While nothing is set in stone with regards to the Ybor City stadium, the estimated cost of building it—featuring a translucent roof and sliding glass walls but also the fewest seats of any in the majors—sits at $892 million. But as Rays team president Brian Auld told reporters at Tuesday’s event when asked about who would be on the hook for that, “We don’t have those answers yet.”

The math is inescapably bad for Tampa. The Rays have previously said that they will contribute somewhere from $150–400 million on their own, depending on whether they can secure naming rights to the stadium. The team and city hope to get a large chunk of money from private financing and local businesses. But even if the city’s resident plutocrats open their wallets, that option is unlikely to bring in more than a few hundred million.

That leaves Hillsborough County responsible for the rest—maybe as much as half a billion dollars. That will be asked of government already trying to trim its budget for 2019 and which needs money for its transportation and education departments; the latter is looking at spending cuts of upwards of $31 million in the coming year. Tampa can’t count on Florida for assistance either. The state legislature has repeatedly stated its opposition to spending public money on stadiums after the fiasco that was Marlins Park, which will cost Miami north of a billion dollars over the next 30 years thanks to the horrendous deal the city and county negotiated with the duplicitous Jeffrey Loria.

Taylor did leave out a few crucial points worth considering:

1. The stadium proposal will not go to a referendum vote in the waning 5-1/2 months left in the MOU search window. Like it or not, Hillsborough County citizens will not get the opportunity to vote on the $892-milllion stadium proposal between now and December 31 at 11:59 PM. Are you an admirer of the plan and want to voice your support? Are you like the council members and commissioners who are opposed to using public subsidies for a stadium (Mayor Buckhorn as well)? Now would be a good time to reach out to City Hall and the Hillsborough County Commission and let them know how you feel.

2. On Wednesday, Rays principal owner Stu Sternberg told the editorial staff of the Tampa Bay Times that he would be willing to contribute more money to the stadium project — largely dependent upon how much private money is thrown toward the project, or how much money the team could net from a naming rights deal — but not in multiples of $150-million. In other words, he could commit somewhere between $150-million and $299-million toward the project, putting Tampa on the hook for at least $593-million (not including the costs associated with moving a TECO power substation, or the money the team would owe to the City of St. Petersburg for breaking the lease before 2027, as well as the cost of demolishing Tropicana Field).

3. According to the terms of the MOU between the City of St. Petersburg and the team, which gave them three years to search Pinellas and Hillsborough counties for a new stadium site, the Rays have until 11:59 PM on December 31, 2018 to hammer out a deal, including a funding apparatus. If you’re counting, that’s roughly 5-1/2 months to come up with at least $593-million before the MOU window turns into a glass slipper.

4. According to the terms of the use agreement, should the City of St. Petersburg redevelop Tropicana Field site (read: that is in the works) while the Rays call it home, the team and city will split the development rights 50/50. The City of St. Petersburg has already pitched a stadium deal to the team and has money to fund the project, whereas the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County do not, meaning at least $300-million would be placed on the shoulders of the taxpayers — assuming the Rays cover at least $250-million, and private investors cover multiple hundreds of millions (read: they won’t). Since the City of St. Petersburg has already drafted a masterplan for the Tropicana Field property, with a new stadium proposed in the northeastern corner of the property, it is is currently developing an alternate masterplan without the team. The plan is to redevelop the property, which has been appraised at $1-billion, with or without them.

Rays reveal details and renderings of proposed stadium, part two — the favorable aspects

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(Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

On Tuesday, the Tampa Bay Rays hosted a press conference in which artistic renderings of a proposed stadium in Ybor City were revealed. The purpose of the presser was simple, to gin up enthusiasm for the project within the community and outside the urban core.

As with anything, many positives were expressed — while unintentional negatives were intimated — during the 45-minute meeting. In the spirit of conveying coherent ideas, as opposed to writing one long convoluted article, I decided to break the subject into two separate categories — thus necessitating two different articles — one on the positives, and one on the negatives. This piece happens to be about the more favorable aspects from the press conference, which took place at the Italian Club in Ybor City, blocks from the the proposed 14-acre site.

Principal owner Stuart Sternberg, team presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman, chief development officer Melanie Lenz, and members of the architecture firm Populus — which is credited with designing more than 2/3 of Major League stadiums in some capacity — were on hand to reveal the plans, which feature a translucent glass roof, a glass outfield wall that slides open and is oriented toward Ybor City, completely synthetic turf, and a total capacity of 30,842; 11,893 fewer than the overall capacity of the Trop.

(Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

A small upper level, as opposed to a complete upper deck, makes for the closest vantage point of any modern stadium, with a nose-to-field distance of 204 feet.

Speaking of seats, there would be a total of 28,216 fixed seats in the stadium — 14,348 at field level, 5,230 on the loge level and 5,138 in the terrace — and room to accommodate 2,626 in the standing room sections. While the capacity would make for the smallest ballpark in Major League Baseball, it reflects the intermittent enthusiasm associated with a long 81-game game season.

There will be 21 distinct viewing platforms and social gathering areas — complete with beverage and food rails — which are connected by a 360-degree concourse that is similar to the one at the Rays Spring Training facility in Port Charlotte, as well as the one at Tropicana Field.

Fountain seating, quaint bullpen bars that bring players close to fans, a brewpub and the Rays Tank are also included in plans. City planners even envision the occasional shutdown of Fourth Avenue, on game days, similar to Yawkey Way outside of Fenway Park in Boston, or Wrigleyville in Chicago.

(Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

What is currently being billed the Tampa Bay Rays Ballpark will include meeting spaces and open concourses that would be open to the community, including the ability to accommodate larger corporate gatherings. The team anticipates a design that allows the stadium to serve as a year-round community asset, with the potential for “programming, events and creative partnerships,” per the official stadium pitch.

(Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

That allows the ballpark to be used as a domed public park of sorts where kids can play on on off-days, following games, or during the offseason. There also is talk of allowing the kitchen spaces to partner with a culinary institute, or the outfield to be used for community yoga, making the stadium a community asset.

Consultants say transit options in Ybor City include a trolley, Amtrak and eventually high-speed rail.

While the stadium plan includes all the bells and whistles that make it one of the most innovative ballparks conceived in some time, many questions linger in the wake of its revealing; for example, how exactly will it be funded? I will discuss the disadvantageous aspects of the press conference tomorrow.

To be continued, as it were…

Dual articles pour cold water on Rays stadium hopes in Ybor

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The Tampa Bay Rays may call the Trop, or the property it sits on, home despite the team’s preference across the bay. (Photo Credit: Tampa Bay Rays)

Two articles in last Sunday’s edition of the Tampa Bay Times threw cold water on the prospect of a new stadium in Ybor City for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Times staff writers Charlie Frago and, surprisingly, John Romano offered contrarian views* on the stadium saga with the closure of the three-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) window — which allowed the Rays to seek regionally for a new stadium site — looming in less than seven months, on December 31, 2018.

In an article titled Deadline clock ticking on Rays agreement with St. Pete: What happens next?, Frago posits that no one, who is willing to talk, sees any hope for hitting the deadline.

The takeaways from the article are threefold, and reiterate what others — including us at X-Rays Spex — have said for years:

  1. Hillsborough does not have enough money to give the team what it really wants or is seeking.
  2. St. Petersburg/Pinellas County can offer the team way more money than Tampa/Hillsborough County.
  3. Tampa’s mayor, Bob Buckhorn, wants nothing to do with the mess that could ensue.

What is laughable, however, is the assertion by Ron Christaldi, a leader in the effort to drum up corporate support for the Rays’ stadium effort, that an extension could be worked out should Hillsborough County not be able to hammer out a deal by the deadline.

I would hope that they would see that the discussions have happened in earnest and be flexible in the date, Christaldi said. You don’t want to artificially stop something that is progressing.

Christaldi also said Kriseman should be commended for his courage and commitment to the interests of the entire region in letting the team look around. With that approach, he said, extending Rays discussions with Hillsborough is more a blip than a meltdown.

Yet Christaldi’s narrow sighted view sidesteps the fact that both the Rays and Hillsborough County waited two years and one month to get the ball rolling on the Ybor location — favoring instead a stadium site announcement in February of 2018.

Meanwhile, and regardless of the jab in the headline Instead of fussing, St. Pete should help the Rays pack, Romano, in essence, is telling Tampa and the Rays they have had enough time to figure out this stadium thing. Either put up the money now, or move on.

…we still haven’t had the important debate. For all the arguing and fussing during the last 10 years, the building of a new stadium was always going to come down to the money.

The Rays are not going to build a stadium on their own. Hillsborough County is not going to fully fund one either. So the team and community need to find some kind of balance that works for both sides, or else begin planning for a future without Major League Baseball in the marketplace.

The point is, all the other debates are ultimately minor and pointless.

I know there might be some temptation on the St. Pete side to revamp the agreement with the Rays to extract more cash if the team leaves Tropicana before the lease ends in 2027.

Honestly, I think that’s shortsighted.

Instead of putting up more impediments, St. Pete should be helping the Rays pack their bags. Whatever extra cash the city might extract from the deal is going to pale in comparison to the windfall of kickstarting the development of the Trop land as soon as possible.

If the city wants to adjust the agreement, it should consider this:

Either the Rays come up with a signed deal in Tampa in the next 12 months, or else the team agrees to immediately begin negotiating for a new stadium on the Trop land.

Either way, St. Pete needs to know how to proceed.

The Rays stand to potentially lose property value if they move from their current location in Downtown St. Petersburg to Tampa, said Noah Pransky in a piece for Action 10 News.

That is part of the reason that neither the team, nor the City of St. Petersburg, is crossing Tropicana Field’s 86-acres off the list of proposed stadium sites.

In the end, the City of St. Petersburg made it’s formal stadium pitch in April of 2017, while the Rays had met with representatives from both sides of the bay multiple times leading up to their announcement four months ago. Had the Rays taken the MOU window seriously, and less like a glaring opportunity to build leverage in the stadium saga, the hope for a deal by the deadline would be more realistic.

*That is, to those deemed the loudest.

The scramble to secure funding for a Rays stadium in Hillsborough continues

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Finding a location was the easy part, but everything else has proven to be much more difficult.

I must concede, with the tiny writing staff that does everything on a voluntary basis for X-Rays Spex, paired with the hectic and stressful end of the school year — due in large part to standardized testing season — I haven’t been able to focus much of my time or energy toward anything, much less the blog. That will change for the better in 11 school days, although that’s neither here or now. In any case, there either has or hasn’t been much progress in the stadium saga depending on your point of view. Personally, I tend to view things through pessimistic lenses, although I prefer to call it being realistic.

With just nine months left to figure out a funding apparatus for a Rays stadium, county administrator Mike Merrill acknowledged that Hillsborough County still has an extremely long way to go late in April.

The Times reported on April 20th that Hillsborough County planned to make developers shoulder the lion’s of stadium construction costs, although negotiations with developers are not yet underway. As Noah Pransky (WTSP Action News) writes, that leaves countless unanswered questions about how the cash-strapped county will pay for a new $800 million stadium in Ybor City that the Rays have, so far, only offered to contribute $150 million toward. In other words, Hillsborough County is looking for private developers to generously assume risk that no one really seems willing to assume.

Another Times writer, Richard Danielson, later proposed a list of ways that Rays owner Stu Sternberg could pay for the estimated $800-million facility without contributing much from his own pocket, or dumping all the costs on taxpayers.

Danielson’s list includes making the stadium a showcase for local food, using the training facilities as a community wellness center, letting a culinary school use the ballpark’s kitchens, or building a community water slide.

Neil deMause (Field of Schemes) did what I meant to had time not been a concern: offer a critical counter argument.

How about a water slide! The article doesn’t actually explain how a water slide would help pay for anything, but moving on:

“You want those who use it and go there to help pay for it,” said Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill, who is at the center of the Tampa-Hillsborough effort to study stadium financing options.

Getting warmer, but how exactly is “make users pay” going to work? After all, that principle has been used for everything from ticket surcharges (which mostly come out of team owners’ pockets, and so are a pretty good deal for the public) to kickbacks of taxes in a “stadium district” (which don’t and are not).

“We’re aggressively looking for private capital, private developers, to build a stadium,” [Hillsborough County Administrator Mike Merrill] said.

We’ve heard this before, too, but a private developer is only going to invest in somebody else’s stadium if they can get a cut of the stadium revenue, right? At which point Sternberg may as well just put up the money himself and repay himself with those revenue streams.

At SunTrust Park, which opened last year, the Atlanta Braves spent $400 million developing The Battery Atlanta, a multi-use destination next to the stadium with a hotel, two office buildings, 550 apartments, a theater and about 20 restaurants. Still, the public contributed $400 million toward a ballpark that cost $622 million.

Ayup. And closing libraries to help pay for it.

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn recently outlined one possible scenario. The city could create what’s been loosely described as an entertainment district around the stadium. Inside the district, a surcharge on sales of food, drinks and merchandise could generate revenue that would be used to help pay off stadium construction bonds.

“Because a stadium is there,” Buckhorn said, “restaurants are going to do better, alcohol sales are going to be higher, T-shirt sales, whatever it may be. The hope is that monies generated by construction of the stadium — be it commercial, residential or retail — be used to pay some of the debt service on the stadium, so you shift the burden from the taxpayers to either tourists or to folks who are benefitting from the construction of the stadium.”

Okay, so there’s an actual idea! Not a great idea, mind you — local restaurants aren’t going to do that much better as a result of having a stadium open 81 days a year nearby, so you’re quickly going to run into problems of whether to raise the tax surcharge to pay off more of the stadium or keep it low enough so people will actually want to open more businesses nearby — but it’s something.

Variations include creating a community development district (there are lot of CDDs for suburban Hillsborough neighborhoods already) or a special district similar to what the Legislature approved this spring for the $3 billion Jeff Vinik-Cascade Investment project known as Water Street Tampa.

Those are very different models, so different that “variations” isn’t really an accurate term. CDDs are basically TIFs: Public improvements are repaid by the projected future rise in regular property tax payments, a plan that can fail in two ways — either if property values don’t actually rise that much, or if they just cannibalize development you would have gotten anyway, either on that site or elsewhere in your city. The Vinik-Cascade project is a special tax surcharge on property owners, which at least doesn’t dip into money the public would be collecting anyway, but which also presupposes a lot of property value increase just from a stadium being built nearby, which doesn’t have a great history of coming true.

“A stadium is a magnet for, arguably, development that might not otherwise occur,” Merrill said. “What you’re trying to do is assess growth, new development, within a district that benefits from a stadium.”

That’s one heck of an “arguably” there.

The problem, ultimately, is that Sternberg is trying to find ways to equitably slice up a giant piece of nothing cake: There are only two ways to pay off a stadium, and one is through the increased revenues that come in from one — which isn’t likely to pay off anything close to the full construction cost, because new stadiums are usually not good financial deals , and if it were Sternberg could finance it with something called a “bank loan” — while the other is with public subsidies. “Let’s charge all the business and property owners who’ll be riding for free on our stadium” isn’t a terrible idea — New York state is considering using it to build more subways — but given past Florida experience with baseball-related development, you might maybe want to temper your expectations a bit.

Knowing that the business community likely wouldn’t pay for a stadium, last week Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn went on hunt for tax breaks to incentivize development in low-income and blighted areas. Buckhorn petitioned Governor Rick Scott in the hope that he would reconsider a decision on “economic opportunity zones,” so that tax breaks could be used to lure developers to the tract of land in Ybor City where the stadium has been proposed.

Buckhorn’s letter called the Ybor site “a vibrant commercial, residential and industrial neighborhood that includes Ybor City, the historic heart of Tampa,” which also “includes pockets of blight and shuttered industrial buildings that could be home to hundreds of new jobs.”

Ambitious as it may sound, the mayor wants the governor to substitute the Ybor neighborhood for another one of the city’s recommended tracts in the Oak Grove neighborhood.

Buckhorn’s letter, however, did not mention anything about a stadium, although the goal for that tract of land is no secret.

His attempt is a jump-the-shark moment … a Hail Mary in a sense. It feels, logically, like a move that would be made when all other means have been exhausted. If that’s so, the private funding aspect has all but flat-lined.

According to Pransky, a DEO spokesperson said, “Hillsborough County did not prioritize opportunity zone census tracts upon submitting them to the state for review and recommendation. We will forward this request to the US Treasury Department which is currently reviewing input from the states.”

Ybor City stadium proponents/cheerleaders announced by Rays 2020

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Fans flock to Tropicana Field on March 29, 2018 for Opening Day. (Photo Credit: Chris Urso/Tampa Bay Times)

Tampa Bay Rays 2020, the grassroots nonprofit advocating for a new baseball stadium in Tampa, held an invitation-only event on Wednesday in which a list of 75 business and community leaders, that will act as ambassadors on that particular mission, was unveiled under the name The Rays 100.

The core is composed of prominent, influential, and wealthy Tampa leaders and has been described as a “transformational” group by Richard Danielson (Tampa Bay Times).

Tampa Bay Rays 2020, much like Baseball Forever in St. Petersburg, will be the umbrella organization that will attempt to gather support for the team’s possible relocation. The Rays 100 will be one part of that initiative, and will be joined by a smaller advisory group created to function as a steering committee for Tampa Bay Rays 2020 efforts.

The advisory group is expected to include Bob Dutkowsky (Tech Data), Robin DeLaVergne (Tampa General Hospital Foundation), Larry Morgan (Tires Plus) Ken Jones (Third Lake Capital), Richard Gonzmart (Columbia Restaurant Group), and Maryann Ferenc (Mise en Place).

Members of The Rays 100 will also work to “actively secure financial support for the Tampa Bay Rays in coordination with the Rays 2020 effort through significant pledges of sponsorships and ticket sales,” Ronald Christaldi (CEO of Shumaker Advisors Florida) said. …A pledge drive which appears to be modeled after Baseball Forever’s.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery

In the latter half of 2016, Baseball Forever announced a campaign which solicited community support by way of non-binding commitments toward:

  • Continuing as an existing supporter of the Rays.
  • Purchasing a Suite.
  • Making the commitment to becoming a Rays sponsor.
  • Purchasing a Rays Local Business Partner Package.
  • Purchasing season tickets.

Money, however, was not requested. For what it’s worth, Baseball Forever’s pledge drive is still active, and has collected thousands of commitments from both the business community and private citizens alike.

Baseball Forever also neither sought, nor received, funding from the Rays for their grassroots efforts, unlike their cross-bay counterparts.

For its part, Rays 2020 is seeking sponsorships at three different levels: naming rights, founding partners and as corporate partners. However, contrary to a misconception by many, don’t expect the entire funding mechanism to come from Tampa’s official cheerleading squad, or the business community at large.

In other words, to think that hundreds of millions of dollars would come pouring in from the business community for altruistic reasons, and nothing else, is idealistic at best (alternately, highly improbable). Every company expects a return on investment equal to, or greater than, the actual investment.

In reality, Stu Sternberg — largely by way of Brian Auld — has made it known that he is seeking a public investment via subsidies, i.e. taxpayer dollars.

Steve Contorno (Tampa Bay Times) wrote on March 8 that the team has no interest in paying for a stadium on its own, this in spite of a pending $1.2-billion media deal which is expected to take effect next season:

Auld made it clear Thursday that the team cannot pay for a stadium on its own. The debt payments, he said, would hamstring payroll and kill its ability to compete. And besides a government contribution, he said the team also needs the business community to seriously commit to tickets and sponsorships.

It then could be presumed that Sternberg will use both community’s efforts toward data mining in a certain sense:

  1. The data collected from both communities will give the Rays a better idea of which stadium site — be that Ybor City or the team’s current home — would generate more corporate revenue. How much the team would be willing to invest into stadium construction will depend upon how much money it can get elsewhere.
  2. The data accrued from both sides of the bay could be used toward increasing the team’s leverage over whichever community is left in the wake come January — when the City of St. Petersburg’s Memorandum of Understanding search window closes.

Anecdotally speaking

Ever the astute observer of the Rays Stadium Saga, Noah Pransky (Shadow of the Stadium, 10 Investigates) offered a succinct criticism of the Times’ lead anecdote in Danielson’s story:

…how CEOs like Vincent Cassidy (Majesty Title Services) used to regularly buy and distribute Rays tickets until they started going unused by the handful “about three years ago.”

On one hand, Cassidy says he’d re-invest in the Rays if there was a new product his clients and associates were excited to go to.

But on the other hand, he apparently didn’t have huge trouble giving away tickets to Tropicana Field, all the way on the other side of that enormous bridge, just a few years back.

So did Tropicana Field all of a sudden become unbearable?

Did the Howard Frankland Bridge all of a sudden get longer?

Or did the Rays tarnish their product so much with their self-fulfilling gloom-and-doom prophecy that Tampa Bay residents no longer think its worth their time to visit the stadium?  And if that’s the case, are we really just spending $800 million to make the Rays cool again for some unknown period of time?