Talk about mixed signals. Or misplaced priorities. Or perverse irony.
St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster is forming a “Mayor’s Sports Council.” Ostensibly, it will help him market the city as a sports venue, a laudable idea. The efforts would range from wooing spring training back to Al Lang Field and pitching St. Pete as a host for the World Baseball Championship in 2013 to bringing back the Final Four and recruiting some USF football games.
Good. Pro-active is always the way to go. Especially in this economy. And St. Pete has marketable assets.
But here’s a suggestion. Before convening the MSC, why not invite the ABC Coalition in for their first-hand take on St. Petersburg’s uber sports concern: keeping the Tampa Bay Rays. If not in St. Petersburg, at least in the region. The Rays’ economic impact is more than $100 million.
The ABC (A Baseball Community), a business coalition initiated by former St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker, has made the regional rounds and made it clear that the Rays can’t make it at the Trop — and will be long gone by the time their lease is up in 2027. Everyone else — from Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to Rays’ owner Stu Sternberg to anyone not in City Hall’s inner circles — also knows that. Foster and the St. Pete City Council remain, seemingly, in dumbfounding denial.
The reasons why the Rays need out of the ill-suited, poorly-located Trop are well documented and need not be repeated here. At this level, leases are broken as the cost of doing business elsewhere. The question is timing.
The new facility/new venue clock is ticking and other suitors — from Charlotte to San Antonio to Portland are watching and calculating. And doubtless hoping that myopic St. Pete officials remain counterproductively provincial and stay focused on wooing spring training and the World Baseball Championships.