Rays clear final hurdle, sign deal for new ballpark

This story was originally published on Wednesday, July 31, 2024, a day after the Rays’ agreement for a new ballpark was officially approved by the Pinellas County Commission.

ST. PETERSBURG -- Rays president Matt Silverman was driving home from Tropicana Field on Tuesday night with his daughter, Alexa, wrapping up a day that saw the Rays’ long-awaited stadium deal clear its final hurdle.

Alexa asked her dad a simple question: What would have happened if the Rays’ new $1.3 billion ballpark had been voted down?

“I don’t know,” Silverman answered. “But we don’t have to worry about that, because we know the baseball team is going to be here, and it’s going to be here forever.”

After 17 years of searching for a long-term home in the Tampa Bay area, the Rays were finally able to at least briefly exhale on Wednesday. They will have a new ballpark in 2028, part of the Historic Gas Plant District development that has now been approved by the St. Petersburg City Council and Pinellas County Commission.

• Historic Gas Plant District Development

The Rays marked the occasion Wednesday morning with a news conference at Tropicana Field. Silverman and team president Brian Auld were joined by St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, St. Petersburg City Council chair Deborah Figgs-Sanders, Pinellas County Commissioner Kathleen Peters, Hines senior managing director Lane Gardner and Best Source Consulting president/CEO Anddrikk Frazier.

“This is a great day, a providential day, for our community,” Welch said. “And we're excited that our Rays are here to stay.”

Silverman said that reality had not fully sunk in yet, even a day after it became official. There will be signs of visible progress soon enough. Construction on the ballpark, located just to the east of Tropicana Field, will begin in January 2025 and be completed as part of the Historic Gas Plant District’s phase one development in time for Opening Day 2028.

Along with the ballpark itself, Gardner said the first phase will include the parking garages that will be built to support The Trop while the new stadium is under construction in the surface lot; a hotel; a retail village; an office building that will house the Rays’ new headquarters; a medical office village; two multi-family developments; affordable housing; and an entertainment venue.

By the time it’s completed, the Rays say their new ballpark will be at the center of the largest mixed-use development in the Southeast -- right where they’ve always been, in downtown St. Petersburg.

“This will be a landmark development in the Southeast and a landmark development for Hines focused on true place-making,” Gardner said.

The ballpark will be owned by the county, and the Rays have committed to a 30-year lease with two five-year renewals as well as a separate non-relocation agreement that commits them to remaining in St. Petersburg for the duration of the lease.

For nearly two decades, the Rays had worked to design ballparks on both sides of the bay -- and, at one point, for a split-season concept with Montreal -- but couldn’t push any of their proposals across the finish line.

Asked Wednesday about the prospect of potential relocation and when it might have come to that, Auld admitted they were “very, very nervous” until Welch reopened his request for proposals for the redevelopment of the 86-acre Tropicana Field site in 2022 and ultimately chose the Rays/Hines bid in 2023.

“It was [principal owner Stuart Sternberg’s] decision. It was the city's decision. It was the county's decision,” Silverman said. “But it took Stu going first and saying, ‘I want to be here.' And after several attempts, we found our way back home, and we couldn't be happier.”

The Rays and local officials say there will be plenty of community benefits associated with the new development. They want to honor the Gas Plant neighborhood’s history and its descendants, hire disadvantaged and minority workers and emphasize locally owned small businesses, and they say the development will generate more than $6 billion in private investment as well as $1.4 billion in local property tax revenue over 30 years.

The Rays also believe the guarantee of a long-term home will benefit their product on the field. Auld said they are betting on the development being “a game-changer” for their business operations, which ideally will support a baseball operations department that has already proven itself as adept as any in the game.

“The winning has been there. The playoff appearances have been there. A couple of World Series appearances. We haven't brought home that title,” Silverman said. “But this is going to help us in our quest for that World Series title and help us be able to look out and predict more confidently how those revenues are going to be generated and how we can invest them back into the team.”