St. Pete Council member: Rays killing the stadium deal means city can "provide so much more community benefits"

Tropicana Field Tampa Bay Rays — Tropicana Field lost much of its fiber roof In St. Petersburg, FL after Hurricane Milton. By Seán Kinane/WMNF News, 13 Oct 2024.

For two decades the Tampa Bay Rays have been seeking a new baseball stadium to call home. Last summer the MLB team hammered out a deal with Pinellas County and the City of St. Petersburg to fund a new stadium on the site of the current Tropicana Field and development in the surrounding area. But the story took a major turn last week when the Rays owners announced they were breaking the deal. Joining us on WMNF’s Tuesday Cafe to talk about it is a critic of that deal, St. Pete City Council member Richie Floyd.

A rush transcript is below.

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Richie Floyd: The deal was to subsidize the Rays, building a new stadium between the city and the county. It was about $600 million in cash. If you add debt subsidy, we’re pushing a billion dollars’ worth of subsidy — and sell them the land that Tropicana Field’s on and its parking lots are on for significantly under market value. And in exchange we were going to get 30 years of baseball played in St. Petersburg as well as a bunch of community benefits that were relatively good. But you know, when you added it all up, the subsidy, the land subsidy and the benefits we’re getting back to the community and the tax dollars received, we were in a significant hole.

The city itself was $250 million in the red, based off of what we were going to receive versus what we’re going to output in just cash subsidy alone. And you know, between that and just having a disagreement with subsidizing a private corporation to the tune of a billion dollars in public money, I couldn’t support the agreement as it was written.

WMNF News: So, despite your opposition and the opposition of a few other elected officials, the deal did go through. But then there was the surprising developments over the last months that the Rays kind of just decided that they would break the deal. They had their reasons, which we’ll talk about, of course. But here are some of the words that the Tampa Bay Times described how residents felt after the team ripped up the deal last week. They said they felt angry, bewildered, and stunned. Were you stunned or angry that the Rays broke this deal?

Richie Floyd: I wasn’t stunned. They had been sending smoke signals for months, I mean, in an October council meeting. They literally said, the deal is dead. And so I wasn’t angry. I would describe myself as frustrated for a few reasons. But the biggest point of frustration for me is that we at City Hall and City staff, and the Rays themselves as well, spent two years and millions of dollars negotiating this agreement. I pulled multiple all-nighters to read legal documents. And at a time when we’re trying to recover from a hurricane, and they wasted our time. And it’s just it was rude, to say the least, and it was not a good look for someone who wants a large investment from the city.

And there was a little surprise as well in that. This was the largest stadium subsidy in MLB history that they turned down. I have no idea where they think they’re going to get more money than this, but it was twice the size of the next biggest subsidy that’s ever actually taken place.

This was the largest stadium subsidy in MLB history that they turned down. I have no idea where they think they’re going to get more money than this, but it was twice the size of the next biggest subsidy that’s ever actually taken place. – St. Pete City Council member Richie Floyd told WMNF’s Tuesday Cafe

WMNF News: Some of the reasons that the Rays said that they killed this deal is that there was [Hurricane Milton], of course, came through, ripped the roof off The Trop — off Tropicana Field. And then, according to the Tampa Bay Times, they said that the after the Rays decided to play this season in Tampa, Pinellas County Commissioners delayed financing. But the County Commission kind of says that nothing was delayed – there was just one vote that was delayed, but they didn’t break any part of the contract. So what are your thoughts about who the bad faith actors were in breaking the deal?

Richie Floyd: So the County Commission delayed after what I feel should be excusable. A historic hurricane season [with] back-to-back hits. And delayed for 7 weeks. But the thing is that the agreement did not require them to approve the bonds for months and months. After that, they were so far ahead of any deadline that I don’t think it’s even notable. So the Rays giving that reasoning as to why they backed out like a 7 week delay is going to cause that many problems. It had been 20 years we’ve been talking about a stadium, and they’re going to throw it in the trash for 7 weeks. I don’t know what to make of that.

WMNF News: Irrespective of baseball, whether baseball’s played in The Trop or not. The city, I think, still has some obligations to make repairs on Tropicana Field. Tell us what you know about that, what kinds of repairs and what the cost might be?

Richie Floyd: Yeah. So the roof blew off Tropicana Field, as I’m sure most people know, and water got in there. It’s not meant to have water in it. It doesn’t have drainage. The seats in the field are not waterproof, and so we need to put a new roof on it. And we need to repair the things that got damaged by the rain hitting them. And the issue is that we owe them 3 more years of baseball there. There’s 3 years left on our 30-year agreement with [the Rays]. And so we’re sort of in a bind that where we owe them an MLB-quality stadium for 3 years. Even though this stadium is basically condemned to a fate of being torn down. We have to give them a stadium for the next 3 years, and so it’s an expensive proposition for such a short amount of time.

My preference would be for us to come sort of come to some sort of settlement or agreement with them that says we’re not going to do something that’s so obviously wasteful, like rebuild a stadium that’s going to be torn down 3 years after it gets finished being used. But we have to have those negotiations out in the open and see what’s a better deal for the city. And you’ll see we’re going to have some of that discussion next Thursday at the City Council meeting.

WMNF News: Do you have an idea of what it might cost if there is no settlement? If the city just has to go ahead and put the new roof on, etc.?

Richie Floyd: We’re guessing a little north of $50 million. But the good news is, I guess. I say, good news. The silver lining is that the building does have insurance, and FEMA does cover things that insurance doesn’t cover. So the city out of pocket I’m expecting — and this is this is very speculative. So have that caveat. I’m expecting maybe $20 million, hopefully south of that, out of the city’s pocket to rebuild the stadium.

WMNF News: So that brings us to an idea that has kind of surfaced since the deal broke. The Times is reporting that the Rays owners are floating the idea of upgrading Tropicana Field and having St. Pete and Pinellas each chip in possibly $200 million and extending the lease and them staying at The Trop for 10 years. Have you heard those things as a member of city council? Have you heard anything about that? And can you give any more detail on any of those numbers, and whether you think that that might be an option?

Richie Floyd: Yeah. So I’ve heard about it. And what I can do for you is put those numbers into context. So just looking at the stadium alone — the stadium part of the deal that they killed alone. It was $600 million, with about an even split — a little more from the county. $600 million going to the stadium to get us 30 years of baseball. Now, what they’re proposing is $400 million between the city and the county to get us 10 years of baseball. On its face it’s a worse deal than they just turned down. And so, to start negotiating from that point I — and on top of that we just went through years of working with them. For them to at the last second change their mind for us to negotiate with them again is gonna be very difficult. I mean, this current ownership group has proven themselves untrustworthy, and the deal that they’re offering us now is worse than the deal that they reneged on before, so I would not hold my breath for that to come to fruition.

WMNF News: The Tampa Bay Times is reporting that St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch made it clear that he no longer wants to be in business with Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg. That would be a change, because Ken Welch has been was one of the biggest fans of this deal that happened between the Rays and Pinellas County and St. Petersburg.

Richie Floyd: I mean, yeah, absolutely. That’s the truth. He was the one who selected them as the developer, and he was the one who, you know, led all of this charge to keep baseball in St. Petersburg, and it was his community benefits agreement that he was very passionate about. And you know we disagreed. I saw where he was coming from, but I disagreed significantly on the subsidizing of a major corporation like that. But to hear him now say he’s not interested is not a surprise either. It’s like I mentioned before. It was a tremendous amount of work to get the agreement to the point that we did. And you know whether you agreed with it or not. I still had to spend a lot of work on it to make sure that I was doing everything I can to influence how the outcome happened. And so the city staff members, the mayor’s office, spent so much time on it, only for it to be killed at the last second by someone who had been all in until we got hit by hurricanes, at least publicly. It’s very difficult for anyone, I think, to rekindle the amount of trust, the amount of work it takes to create an agreement like this, the things in the city that get ignored. While you’re trying to create an agreement like this, we can’t go through that again with someone that we can’t trust, and so I see why the mayor would come at it from that angle.

WMNF News: So that brings us brings us to the question about whether the city might have an appetite for a similar type of deal with the Rays if that could be resurrected if there’s new ownership?

Richie Floyd: So we’ll have to start over, I think, with new ownership. It won’t just be as simple as saying like dusting off the papers and saying, Here’s your new agreement. Times have changed a little bit. Costs have changed and city council’s changed. We have two different council members than we did whenever we passed the original agreement. So I don’t know what that means. But I know that if there was a new ownership that was interested, I’ve heard the mayor say things like he’d be interested in talking to them. I’m sure anyone would be interested in talking to them, but I can’t predict what that outcome would be like at this moment. A lot of things have changed.

WMNF News: So it looks like in the immediate future there’s not going to be construction on a new baseball stadium at the site of Tropicana Field. But there was all sorts of other development that was planned for that area under the deal that the Rays just broke. So could St. Petersburg, independent of the team, develop areas like the parking lots that are near Tropicana Field?

Richie Floyd: Yeah. So you bring up a really good point. Right now, we would have to wait until the lease agreement ends with the Rays. Otherwise they get 50% of the proceeds until that lease agreement ends. So I think what you’ll see is us find a way to end the lease agreement, be it through repairing Tropicana Field and providing them with the stadium for 3 more years, or negotiating some sort of settlement with them. That’s what you’ll see happen in the short term. And then, in the long term, I think you bring up a really good point. There was a lot of things included in this agreement that were not about baseball. And my point the entire time when pushing back against subsidizing the baseball stadium was that we would be able to afford so much more if we did not have to spend half a billion dollars of city money on a stadium over the next 30 years.

And now we’re in that position. We’re going to be able to develop this piece of land and provide so much more community benefits. So many more high-quality public goods and services. We’re talking like rec centers, parks, social housing, environmental upgrades around Booker Creek. There are so many things: museums, jobs. There are so many things that are going to have so much more financing if we’re not subsidizing a baseball stadium. That really, I think, everyone in the city recognizes. While it does hurt to be in this position with the Rays. Even if you didn’t support the deal. You still know that the city and the future of the area around Tropicana Field, our future is bright here, and it’s going to be really good. And we’re going to be able to get a lot done. We’re an attractive place to be, and we’re going to be able to invest in the things that make us attractive.

We’re going to be able to develop this piece of land and provide so much more community benefits. So many more high-quality public goods and services. – St. Petersburg City Council member Richie Floyd on WMNF’s Tuesday Cafe

Also on Tuesday Café (March 18) – Jeremy Scahill interviews Sami Al-Arian

Longtime investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed former USF professor Dr. Sami Al-Arian last week for the news outlet Drop Site News and Scahill gave WMNF permission to play the interview.