It's still a big question mark whether the Tampa Bay Rays will play another game in St. Petersburg.
A standoff has developed between the baseball team and Pinellas County over financing a new stadium on the Tropicana Field site.
The team has refused to officially back out of the deal, saying it has fulfilled its obligations and is waiting for county commissioners to either approve financing of bonds to build the stadium or back out of the deal.
But one sports business executive says that site could be redeveloped — without the Rays playing there.
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WUSF talks with Bill Sutton, a former vice president of the National Basketball Association and the first director of the University of South Florida's Sport & Entertainment Management MBA program.
It looks like right now one side is waiting for the other side to flinch, and they're both staring into each other's eyes with their hands on their guns. Is that a good description? And tell me what you think might happen, or why are they both doing this?
This is the classic example of timing is everything. This looked like it was a done deal and everything moving forward, but two hurricanes later, one election later, we kind of are, "Is there a market for the Rays if they want to go somewhere else and play?" Absolutely. Is spending $56 million to repair the Trop just to tear it down a good business decision? Probably not. Was deciding to play in Tampa rather than in St. Petersburg, given the bed tax and the tax support and political support, necessary? Probably not. That was an economic decision, rather than what I would call a sound political business decision.
"Is spending $56 million to repair the Trop just to tear it down a good business decision? Probably not. Was deciding to play in Tampa rather than in St. Petersburg, given the bed tax and the tax support and political support necessary? Probably not."Bill Sutton
One interesting thing about this whole agreement as it stands now is the way the team can still control the land, this really prime land in the middle of downtown St. Petersburg without building a stadium. Is that standard operating procedure for these kind of contracts?
Nothing is standard operating procedure on this one. The stadium was going to be the anchor and support everything. You know, I don't know how desirable it is without the stadium, and I assume it still is pretty good land in a pretty good area, and could have a major impact on the future of St. Petersburg. So yeah, whatever happens there is a big question mark.
So give our listeners a sense of where we are right now. What happens if one of the entities backs out, or what happens if nobody backs out? What happens then?
Well, I think the biggest thing right now is if the team is going to go forward, where are the Rays going to play between now and the new stadium? That's a big issue. And how long is it going to be before they can move into a new stadium, and how much does it affect their financing and their plans and their operations to push off to 2029. It's a long way down the road, and there's a lot of things that can happen, and I wouldn't blame the Rays for being a little skittish about that. One thing that everybody has to acknowledge is the Rays would not be without suitors. I mean, there's a lot of places that would love to have the Rays and build them a stadium and arguably at better terms than they're getting right now in Tampa-St. Pete.
Nashville would probably be my leading contender. Maybe Charlotte, but it would probably be one of those two. Maybe Portland, Oregon, would be a third option. But I happen to think Nashville would be a sound option for them to consider, and I'm sure the people in Nashville are considering it right now.
Do you think that's a likely scenario?
I don't think it's likely or not, but it's a possibility. There's a lot of angst on both sides. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong here. It's just an unfortunate occurrence of things that have come together in such a way that they've created a Pandora's box that have opened up to a lot of questions and a lot of questions that should have been answered and addressed before and weren't, or a lot of things that could have been anticipated and weren't, and then a hurricane's an act of God. Who can anticipate an act of God?
"There's a lot of angst on both sides. Nobody's right, nobody's wrong here. It's just an unfortunate occurrence of things that have come together in such a way that they've created a Pandora's box that have opened up to a lot of questions and a lot of questions that should have been answered and addressed before and weren't..." - Bill Sutton.
Do you think the Rays could go ahead and maintain development of the land without a stadium? Do you think they'd still have any kind of public support at all for that?
To me, the biggest consideration about the development of that land is, what is it going to do for the economic viability of St. Petersburg, regardless of who develops it, regardless of who owns it? I think if it's a good idea and it's going to generate jobs and housing and opportunities and attract other things to come to St. Petersburg, to me, it's a moot point who runs it. Well, I think people would feel some angst about the Rays running it from being not in the market? Yeah, I do. I do. But again, if it's a great idea and it's successful and it has a positive impact on the community, then I think that goes away in time.
