The Rays will play their 2025 house video games at Tampa’s George M. Steinbrenner Subject — the Yankees’ spring coaching house — within the wake of injury to Tropicana Subject from Hurricane Milton. There’s been an ongoing debate about whether or not “the Trop” can be repaired within the interim, as the present web site was deliberate to be the positioning of a brand new Rays stadium set to open in 2028. Latest occasions have put that 2028 deal in jeopardy, John Romano of the Tampa Bay Occasions reviews, and Rays proprietor Stu Sternberg is once more referencing relocation as a doable consequence.
As Romano outlines, Hurricane Milton and the following injury prompted the town council and county fee to postpone scheduled bond votes that had been key to securing financing for the redevelopment plan. These delays pushed the vote again by one month, however in doing so pushed them again past the November election, which means the composition of the boards who’re voting on the requisite bonds has modified. Romano provides that the timeline to interrupt floor in 2025 was already “tight” and carried “little or no wiggle room.”
“Final month, the County Fee upended our ballpark settlement by not approving their bonds, as they promised to do,” Sternberg instructed the Occasions. “That motion despatched a transparent message that we had misplaced the county as a accomplice. The way forward for baseball in Tampa Bay turned much less sure after that vote.”
Sternberg pledged to “exhaust all [options]” to maintain the Rays within the space however ultimately conceded that relocation is “not an unlikely conclusion.” Pinellas County commissioner Chris Latvala, per ABC Motion Information’ Chad Mills, not too long ago blasted the staff for committing to play the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Subject fairly than a facility positioned inside Pinellas County, comparable to Clearwater’s BayCare Ballpark (the spring house of the Phillies). Clearwater mayor Bruce Rector provided related criticism to Romano.
Romano factors out that Steinbrenner Subject has a bigger capability and far more not too long ago upgraded services, setting the stage for a smoother transition and decrease income losses. Latvala and Rector contend that Pinellas County taxpayers are committing $1 billion in public funding, and thus the Rays ought to have felt obligated to play their video games at a stadium inside Pinellas County, fairly than close by Hillsborough County, the place Steinbrenner Subject is positioned.
There’s no indication that the Pinellas County Fee will now vote in opposition to the beforehand authorized bonds, however Latvala didn’t sound notably motivated to hurry the method alongside, whatever the redevelopment’s tight timeline.
“If we wish to take our time, we are able to take our time,” he instructed Romano. “…I don’t suppose we ought to be rushed. And if the bonds fall by way of, so be it.”
It’s doable the delays might already be sufficient to push again breaking of floor and delay the stadium’s readiness into 2029. That would include elevated development prices, which Romano speculates might put the Rays on the hook for greater than $100M in extra bills — all at a time once they’ll be taking in lowered revenues from 2025-28 because of enjoying video games at a smaller web site. That will even play a serious position within the staff’s resolution on whether or not to stay in Florida or extra aggressively pursue a relocation bid.
