St. Pete City Council member Richie Floyd on why he voted against the new Tampa Bay Rays stadium

The St. Petersburg City Council approved a major redevelopment project on Thursday; it will re-shape the Historic Gas Plant District and the centerpiece will be a new stadium for Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays.

St. Petersburg City Council member Richie Floyd was one of three council members who voted against the deal. We spoke with him on WMNF’s Tuesday Café on July 23 about why.

Listen to this full show here:

Five of his colleagues supported the deal by the Rays and their development partner Hines to build a new stadium and redevelop the Historic Gas Plant District on about 86 acres near downtown St. Pete.

The total public and private investment is expected to be $6.5 billion. Just the stadium will cost $1.3 billion; the Rays will pay $700 million of that.

As part of the agreement, the Rays will get ticket sales, concessions, naming rights and broadcast proceeds. The city will no longer get a share of ticket sales.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, it will take until 2055 for the City of St. Petersburg to pay off the $683.8 million in public debt for the stadium and surrounding development.

The stadium will be built east of Tropicana Field over a parking lot where there is a suspected burial ground.

The Rays will contribute $10 million toward a Woodson African-American Museum.

Here is more of WMNF’s coverage of the various Rays stadium proposals through the years.

Watch this interview:

Also on Tuesday Café on July 23, 2024

We opened up the phone lines so that our audience could share their thoughts about major recent events including President Joe Biden dropping out of his reelection race and endorsing Kamala Harris for president.