To borrow from Phil Rizzuto and Harry Caray: Holy cow! Is the baseball stadium in trouble?
The events of the past few days suggest some distance between the Tampa Bay Rays on the one hand, and the city and county governments on the other.
The chairman of the St. Petersburg City Council, James Bennett, went out of his way to question the financial aspects of the deal.
The city's staff just issued a 45-page report questioning whether a new 34,000-seat stadium can work on the cramped site, and proposing design changes.
And then there's the matter of the Pinellas County government, which is miffed at being taken for granted even though its approval is vital.
None of this means that the stadium is dead — or that it is a bad idea. Maybe it's still a great idea. But this does mean the local governments are at least not openly behaving like pushovers.
The relations between the Rays and the county government are especially interesting, and a little puzzling.
It seems clear now that any stadium deal will require the continued participation of Pinellas County through its hotel tax.
But the team has not had nearly the level of contact with the county as it has had with the city. Maybe the assumption was that the county's approval would be an afterthought.
(And you know, maybe that was a reasonable calculation. It's hard to imagine the County Commission having the guts to be the lonely, decisive "no" vote if all the other pieces are in place.)
Still, an extension of the county's hotel tax to pay for the stadium would be a "new" tax in my book, contrary to the original assurances.
As for the city, I gotta say, the latest report sent by the staff to Mayor Rick Baker was a frank and level-headed assessment, the opposite of a gushing love note — and it found the Rays' plan lacking.
In particular, the city disagrees with the Rays' cheerful assessments about parking availability and the ease of walking up to three-quarters of a mile from a parking spot to the stadium on sultry Florida evenings.
The staff also objects to the Rays' initial proposal to nestle team offices and parking on the northern edge of the Mahaffey Theater, and suggests several other design changes. (I'll put a copy of the report on my blog as well.)
The staff's conclusion is that "it may be challenging to accommodate the proposed stadium on the Al Lang site."
I think the clock is running out faster than our friends in the Rays' front office admit. Until now, there has been a bit of an attitude of, "Don't worry, all these pesky details will be revealed in time. Just enjoy the drawings and the Kevin Costner commercials."
Issues: the Tropicana Field deal. Financing for the new stadium — and ironclad protections for the taxpayers. Site plan. Parking. Environmental impacts. The City Council has to take its first step toward calling an election on June 5. That is 44 days away.
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I hope you'll stop by between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. today for a two-hour live Web chat on all things related to the Tampa Bay Rays' proposed baseball stadium.
Feel free to jump in at blogs.tampabay.com/troxler with questions or comments, or just stop by to see what people are saying.
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