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Ruth: Tampa Bay Rays stadium deal should not be this hard

 
Tampa Bay Times
Published Feb. 8, 2015

If you are of (ahem) a certain age, do you get the odd feeling that the back and forth, the hemming and hawing, the fits and starts swirling around the future of the Tampa Bay Rays recalls the gamesmanship surrounding the size of the conference table that delayed the start of the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War?

By now, the Rays brain trust ought to have been roaming the byways of Tampa Bay, kicking the tires of potential sites to relocate the team from Tropicana Field. All that was needed was a vote from the St. Petersburg City Council approving a memorandum of understanding giving the team permission to look at sites in both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties to determine if a more suitable and profitable stadium deal might be worked out.

Details and billable hours to follow.

This was not exactly a document revealing the human genome, or ending a war, or explaining the Da Vinci Code. However blessing a Rays very preliminary exploration for a new stadium turned into a legal morass.

At issue was a question council member Karl Nurse raised, noting the agreement did not specifically address what would happen to the Rays development rights on the Tropicana site if the team moved prior to the expiration of the team's lease in 2027. As a practical matter, the development rights should cease when the team leaves the location. As a legal matter, the whole thing threatened to become the Keystone Pipeline of stadium deals.

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman has argued the Rays are fully aware their development rights would conclude upon packing up. Unfortunately, Rays president Brian Auld didn't help things by first saying the team would not agree to changing even one comma, even a semicolon in the memo, which was complete posturing phooey.

Alas, because of all the stubbornness, the City Council voted 5-3 against approving the memo.

Two very modest things need to happen.

First, the memo should include some additional verbiage laying out a mutually agreed upon agreement of the development rights if and when the Rays decide to leave Tropicana Field. Even Joe Pesci's subpar lawyer in My Cousin Vinny ought to be able to figure this out.

Next the Rays, who are in a business consumed with numbers, ought to understand this figure: 2. That's number of council members Kriseman and the Rays have to flip from the five opposing votes: Jim Kennedy, Wengay Newton, Amy Foster, Steve Kornell and Bill Dudley.

A little less arrogance on the part of the Rays and a little more making nice-nice with City Council members, who, like all politicians, merely want to be treated with a bit of respect and deference, could go a very long way to resolving what should have taken, oh, about 15 minutes in December before everyone got their royal "We's" in a wad.

How tough should this be? Don't answer that.