It looks like the deal to keep the Tampa Bay Rays in St. Petersburg is dead. The team wants to renegotiate the deal - but it's unclear whether that is going to happen.
The death knell was sounded Thursday on the deal to transform the Tropicana Field site for a multi-use center anchored by a new baseball stadium. It came after St. Petersburg city council members delayed their vote on bonds to pay for the stadium until January 9th.
Council member Richie Floyd said if the city renegs on the agreement, if could have far-reaching implications.
"“We give them an out. They get to keep the land and we are left with potentially no baseball team, but a baseball team owns a big chunk of our downtown.” - St. Petersburg City Councilman Richie Floyd
“We give them an out. They get to keep the land and we are left with potentially no baseball team, but a baseball team owns a big chunk of our downtown,” he said. “I mean, it sucks to be in that situation.”
And that could mean the Rays/Hines Partnership could still have a green light to develop the Trop's property - without having to build a new stadium.
The council then reversed an earlier decision to pay for a new dome for the Trop, whose fabric roof was torn off by Hurricane Milton. That vote came after Rays President Brian Auld said he doesn't believe the dome can be fixed in time for the 2026 season.
"I believe it's going to be next to impossible for the Trop to be repaired in time for the 2026 season," Auld told council members, "and given that that's the case, efforts to try to repair it in time for that will cause us to have to have a parallel path for some other alternative for the '26 season, and that feels to me like a bad use of funds across the entire group."
Council member Brandi Gabbard then motioned to reverse their earlier decision to pay for fixing the Trop's roof - which the city is obligated to do under their current contract.
"The rationale with the new information is that we have even greater uncertainty now than we had before as to the future of the city of St. Petersburg and the Rays," Gabbard said, "and I believe that possibly after we made a different vote, we could talk about what moving forward with a later conversation on that may look like, but I'm just not quite ready to put $22 million towards something with an entity that we may never have a deal with again."
The vote came two days after Pinellas County Commissioners voted to delay their allocation of tourist bed taxes to pay for a new stadium.
Auld said the team is willing to sit down with both boards to renegotiate what had looked like a done deal until the two hurricanes swept through the region. They said in a letter sent to Pinellas commissioners hours before their Tuesday vote that a delay in allocating bond money for the project "would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone." They said the team is ready to work on "a new solution" to remain in St. Petersburg.
"I can't continue to move forward based on what I've seen from the county and so I am open to any and all discussions that will get us there," Auld said.
""I can't continue to move forward based on what I've seen from the county and so I am open to any and all discussions that will get us there." - Rays President Brian Auld
Auld apologized for the tone of the letter that basically blamed Pinellas commissoners for delaying a vote on a bond issue for making the whole deal untenable.
"I want to state for everyone that our letter was not intended in any way to be threatening, but I've gotten the feedback," he said. "I understood that it came across in a way that we didn't intend, and I'm very sorry for that. I apologize for the tone with which it was received. Our intention was never to threaten it was to in a straightforward way be the bearer of bad news."
The new stadium was slated to open for the 2028 season, but the Rays now say it would not be ready until 2029. The Rays' lease at Tropicana Field ends in 2027.
The letter said the Rays had already spent $50 million on preconstruction work, but they could not afford to bear the financial burden of a one-year delay in the construction of the replacement for Tropicana Field.
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch has been the primary driver in the move to reconfigure the Trop site into what was billed as the Historic Gas Plant District. He had a personal stake - members of his family were evicted from the mostly black neighborhood when the stadium was built in the early 1980's.
He issued this statement after the vote:
“While we are disappointed that we are pausing the repair of Tropicana Field and the bond issuance that would finance the city’s contribution to a new stadium, we believe there remains a path forward. My administration is prepared to bring a modified plan back to City Council for their consideration.
"However, I want to make it clear that this plan will not include additional funds from the City. We maintain our position that the Historic Gas Plant District is an equitable economic driver that will benefit future generations. Ultimately, we remain committed to carrying out our contractual obligations and stand ready to work with our partners in the weeks ahead.”
