The Tampa Bay region’s quest for a new Rays ballpark may be at “now or never” stage. With their lease at Tropicana Field expiring in 2028, the team faces a high-stakes decision: build a $1 billion stadium on land now occupied by Hillsborough College or leave for another city.
On Tuesday, the college’s District Board of Trustees voted unanimously to begin negotiations with the Rays on converting the North Dale Mabry campus into a stadium-anchored, mixed-use development.
“Candidly, that will probably be the only unanimous vote moving forward,” said Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who called the move an encouraging but necessary “first step” while stressing the region will soon be out of chances to keep the team.
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Hagan, who has represented the county in previous Rays efforts to move from Tropicana Field, remains concerned about a group in Orlando with more than enough in the bank to cash in on the Bay area’s failure.
“I believe it’s either going to be located at [Hillsborough College] or the team will be in Orlando,” Hagan said Wednesday on WDAE radio. “Orlando has significantly more bed tax revenue, but it’s an inferior market. It’s a service-driven economy, the TV market is smaller, and the traffic is worse. … But if a deal can’t be reached here, that’s where they’ll end up.”
The Rays’ new ownership, led by managing partner Pat Zalupski and CEO Ken Babby, will need to know soon if Hillsborough can get it done. The negotiating period with the college ends in six months.
Hagan acknowledged the Rays’ plans to finish the ballpark by 2029 was “extremely aggressive.” So has Babby.
Hagan, however, is convinced “it can be done.”
Braves faced a similar time crunch
The Atlanta Braves followed a similar timetable when building Truist Park, which opened in 2017 as part of a successful mixed-use development known as The Battery. It’s the model the Rays are using for their stadium project.
“Having spent some time with the Braves’ CEO many years ago, he shared with me that it only took three or four months to broker their deal, and from the time they broke ground, 2½ years later they were playing ball,” Hagan recalled. “So, it can be done, but we have to move very aggressively.”
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He also emphasized the broader benefits of the development beyond baseball, from concerts to retail to out-of-town visitors, calling the project “The Battery on steroids.”
Bill King, a reporter with the North Carolina-based Sports Business Journal, put the scale of the project in perspective on WUSF’s “Florida Matters Live & Local.”
“The last one that was built was what, 2020, at about $1.2 billion,” King said referencing Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas. “That's just for the ballpark. That's not the additional development that's around that they're talking about around the stadium here.
“So, it's a large price tag. But look, this is the decision that communities have to make. If you'd like to see how this plays out, look at Oakland.”
Time for the rubber to meet the road
The A’s left their long-time, dilapidated home after years of attempting to get local governments to help fund a new ballpark. They eventually secured a deal in Las Vegas, which is building them a $2 billion stadium on the Strip. In the interim, they are playing at a minor-league stadium in Sacramento.
In Tampa Bay, the Rays’ new ownership group has commiserated with local fans about the community “fatigue” developed during a similar quest to leave Tropicana Field.
“It went on for years and years and years, and at this point, there's a new ownership group, and it has an appetite to go down this road for a while,” King said. “But at some point, which would align, I would say, with the expiration of that lease in St Petersburg, the rubber meets the road. And there are other markets out there where there would be an interest and an appetite, and that's how stadiums get built.”
The bottom line in modern sports economics: To keep a team from relocating, the entire community must support the effort to build a stadium, King said. If not, another market will.
“I mean, the reality is, for all that time that the team has been in St. Pete, it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked in spite of really good ballclubs year after year after year. … So there are a lot of bigger questions about the market in general.
“But with all that said, I think this is at least as maybe a path toward some hope with an ownership group that maybe looks at this as a real estate development and not just a ballclub.”
