St. Petersburg has been doing so many things right since it survived and transcended green-bench identity, Johnny Carson’s “God’s waiting room” meme and Bay Plaza undevelopment.
It is a bona fide city of the arts–with acclaimed museums, nearby galleries and trendy bistros. It’s home to an ever-burgeoning university. It has a world class waterfront. It hosts an international Grand Prix race. Beach Drive has morphed from quaint to hip. People with upscale options want to live there.
It has arrived, and a lot of folks have noticed.
And yet.
It ironically–and inexplicably–has a minor-league city council calling shots on whether Major League Baseball will ultimately remain in the Tampa Bay market. Mayor Rick Kriseman has come to the conclusion that he doesn’t have enough council votes to forge an agreement that would allow the Tampa Bay Rays to look in Hillsborough County–as well as Pinellas–for a potential new stadium site.
So much for that second chance–after language was shored up to make sure that the Rays would not receive money from any Trop development after they decided to leave–but before a new facility was ready elsewhere in Tampa Bay. “We are at a standstill,” understated Kriseman.
This keeps the Rays unacceptable status utterly quo.
It also prevents the city from kick-starting any plans to develop Tropicana Field’s high-upside 85 acres. It certainly delays–at best–scenarios that would add synergistic, tax-base ripples to a part of town that is economically hamstrung by an outdated, catwalk-bedecked baseball facility in its midst. One that averages less than 18,000 attendees 81 times a year. One that only Ferg’s finds complementary.
It’s incongruous. It’s counterproductive. It’s beyond provincial and hard line. It’s just dumb.
It’s as if the city that had trumped the retiree cliché was still clinging to its inferiority complex with Tampa, a city that now looks to St. Pete for downtown inspiration. Busch Gardens, TIA, the main campus of USF, the Bucs, the Lightning all ultimately chose Tampa. But thanks again, MLB–namely that unkept gentleman’s promise to Frank Morsani–for the expansion franchise that went to Vince Naimoli and St. Petersburg.
The erstwhile Florida Suncoast Dome was poorly located then, and that reality–the far western fringe of an asymmetrical market minus mass transit–obviously hasn’t changed. In fact, no other MLB city has fewer residents within a 30-minute commute. Milwaukee is next, and it’s not even close.
Council member Jim Kennedy’s response to the stadium standoff was characteristically disingenuous. “There is nothing preventing the city and Rays from sitting down and saying ‘What can we do together?’ The concept that we cannot talk unless they can look everywhere–that is self-inflicted by the Rays.”
That’s maddening. Unless the Rays have the option of looking across the bay and beyond an obsolete facility in a loser location, there is nothing to talk about. And that includes adherence to the remainder of the lease that runs through 2027. It’s a given that the Rays will be gone before then: either across the bay or out of the state or across the Canadian border. And the price to pay for lease-breaking: Call it the cost of doing business and getting the hell out of St. Pete.
It’s infuriating that city council still can’t acknowledge that the Rays are a major regional asset–as well as one that is more likely to succeed closer to the business hub of the sizable-enough Tampa Bay market. It also doesn’t get that MLB grows increasingly frustrated with the underperforming franchise. Nor does it get ever-eroding leverage.
And it obviously doesn’t realize that a potentially transformative project on prime Trop acreage could be the real game-changer for St. Petersburg. A master developer with plans for corporate business, retail and residential would have a welcome impact on property tax rolls.
Stonewalling the Rays on stadium talks might play well with certain constituencies. That’s politics. We’ve seen it with transit. But sometimes leaders just have to lead and think big picture–in this case, by maximizing the return in redeveloping the Tropicana Field site. All the while, helping to keep the Rays in this market.
This shouldn’t require a visionary approach. A modicum of common sense and a measure of enlightened self-interest should be sufficient to ensure what’s best for this market’s future.