Tampa City Council members heard their first presentation on the Tampa Bay Rays' stadium project and comments from dozens of citizens during a nearly four-hour workshop on Tuesday evening.
The team is asking for $250 million upfront from the city to help build the indoor ballpark on land currently used by the Hillsborough College. That would be on top of $750 million sought from Hillsborough County. Together that's nearly half the cost of the new $2.3 billion facility.
The team has offered pay for more than half of project, plus cost overruns. As during an April public workshop with county commissioners, Rays CEO Ken Babby didn't divulge any new details about their financing except to emphasize the team would not support cutting public services.
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"I can proudly say standing here tonight that the Tampa Bay Rays are prepared to make the largest community benefits agreement in the city of Tampa's history," he told council members during his presentation.
"This is the largest private investment by a sports team in the state's history, and one of the largest nationally in the history of Major League Baseball," he said. "A generational moment, a generational investment with world-class returns."
Council members did not vote but gave the public a chance to air their concerns.
Just how the city would raise the money remains a sticking point.
One plan involves using money from the Community Investment Tax, a half-cent sales tax recently approved by voters after being marketed as not going to build stadiums.
Joe Greco of the the city's Citizen's Advisory Committee said the process is being rushed and should be put on a public ballot.
"We want a motion made by y'all to vote on this as any use of CIT funds on the new stadium is a violation of taxpayer intent," he told council members. "The use of CIT dollars and its purpose of a new Rays stadium requires taxpayer approval. We recommend placing a question on the November 2026 ballot. I believe that's doable. I think we have till August to do that."
Council members had no comment on that proposal. It would bust a June 1 deadline set by the team on reaching a financing agreement with the city and county. The Rays' lease at St. Petersburg's Tropiana Field ends in 2028, so they want the new ballpark open by March 2029.
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County officials have said they cannot meet that deadline. A proposed vote on the financing plan has been pushed back a minimum of two weeks, until the county commission's next meeting. That city would vote after the county.
Jonathan Butler of South Tampa said the city doesn't want to become like Montreal and Oakland, where the Expos and Athletics relocated to other markets.
"This opportunity does not come along very often. If we let this go by, we're going to be shaking our heads saying, 'Gosh, we're just like Montreal. We're just like Oakland,' Guess what? It's Tampa now," he said. "We do not want to be on that list. This brings jobs and opportunities to not just Tampa, but the whole region."
Tampa resident Laura Lawson said the city can't afford to invest in the project.
"I've heard a lot of talk about do no harm today, but I'm not feeling the 'do no harm' part of this," she said. "I think this is going to do harm to our budget, significant harm. I think it's going to do terrible harm to our tax collector's office. I think it's going to do harm to our traffic situation on Dale Mabry Highway right out there at rush hour. And I think it's going to do terrible harm to Hillsborough College."
The Rays' 30,000-seat stadium would be built in the Drew Park neighborhood across Dale Mabry Highway from Raymond James Stadium. Hillsborough College's Dale Mabry campus would be rebuilt on west side of the 130-acre plot using proposed state funds.
The team plans to help fund stadium construction using future increases in property tax revenue from a privately financed multiuse development, captured through the existing Drew Park Community Redevelopment Area.
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Longtime City Councilman Charlie Miranda has been a skeptic of spending money on sports facilities since the original Community Investment Tax was used to build Raymond James Stadium 30 years ago.
"When we go to the bank, you've got to turn a financial statement where your money's coming from, what you pay," he said. "But when you have a sports team, which is a business, you don't do that, or I have never seen one. We need the Rays to really talk about transparency."
Miranda council seat represents the Drew Park and West Tampa neighborhoods that surround the proposed ballpark. He says traffic is already bad there during Tampa Bay Buccaneers games.
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"The people that live on the east side of Dale Mabry, they can't leave or arrive 1½ to one hour and 45 minutes, maybe two hours before the game and two hours after the game – they can't get out of the house," he said. "We don't need buses, we need light rail overhead so that that you don't have to build no more roads. Every time you see an expansion of the expressway, six months later you got another expansion coming because more people come in."
