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Editorial: St. Petersburg council should break stadium stalemate

 
By blocking a regional search for a sit for a new stadium, the St. Petersburg City Council has prolonged a stalemate with the Tampa Bay Rays that harms fans, taxpayers and the city’s ability to put Tropicana Field’s 85 acres to a more productive use.
By blocking a regional search for a sit for a new stadium, the St. Petersburg City Council has prolonged a stalemate with the Tampa Bay Rays that harms fans, taxpayers and the city’s ability to put Tropicana Field’s 85 acres to a more productive use.
Published May 27, 2015

By blocking a regional search for a site for a new stadium, the St. Petersburg City Council has prolonged a stalemate with the Tampa Bay Rays that harms fans, taxpayers and the city's ability to put Tropicana Field's 85 acres to a more productive use. Council member Karl Nurse wants to rejuvenate the baseball debate at a workshop today by proposing an Urban Land Institute study of the Trop site's redevelopment potential. Time for a sensible solution on the Rays is running out, and the council should stop clinging to the unproductive status quo and pursue Nurse's forward-thinking idea.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg wants to search for new stadium sites in both Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. That remains a reasonable position, because the Rays should be able to look throughout their core market for the best location. St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman forged a deal to establish a sliding scale of payments to the city if the Rays leave the Trop before their contract expires in 2027. But council members Wengay Newton, Amy Foster, Bill Dudley, James Kennedy and Steve Kornell held out for additional concessions — either a search limited to St. Petersburg sites or a higher buyout price.

Neither of those strategies are particularly viable. After seven years of stalemate, St. Petersburg's leverage with the Rays continues to decrease with every passing day. The earliest the Rays could leave the Trop would be about 2020, because evaluating sites, arranging financing and constructing a stadium take time. And by 2023 or so, any city in North America could start building the Rays a new ballpark. If the stalemate continues much longer, the council will have lost an opportunity to keep Major League Baseball in Tampa Bay.

Sternberg rejected a St. Petersburg-only search during his dealings with former Mayor Bill Foster. He ignored developer Darryl LeClair's Carillon proposal. Trop attendance continues to drop, and relations with the council majority have soured so much that Sternberg unwisely refuses to send anyone to today's council meeting. It isn't even clear that the Rays still would agree to Kriseman's latest proposal if council members reversed course now.

It also is questionable whether most City Council members are willing to spend public money to help pay for a new baseball stadium that could cost $500 million. Council members who do favor that idea should recognize that a prompt regional search is critical to holding down costs to St. Petersburg residents. Trends on bond interest rates and tourist tax revenues are favorable. An expensive, wide-open bidding war with Montreal or other cities would still be a few years away. Council members who aren't interested in paying for a stadium should recognize that letting the Rays look for a new home increases the odds of keeping the team in the region for another generation, while allowing the city to create hundreds of jobs and add millions of dollars to tax rolls by redeveloping the Trop site. The recent $57 million sale of Fusion 1560, the apartment complex just across First Avenue S from the Trop, demonstrates the lost opportunity cost of continuing to preserve a huge parking lot for a little-used stadium with no long-term viability.

An Urban Land Institute study would help move St. Petersburg forward by assessing the Trop's potential, with or without a new stadium. The do-nothing alternative freezes both St. Petersburg and the Rays in limbo, unable to plan for the future. Council members should speak frankly today and move toward a solution rather than cling to a shortsighted standoff that benefits no one.