Work continues to repair the hurricane damage that rendered Tropicana Field unplayable in 2025. St. Petersburg officials updated the local media on the construction efforts on Wednesday, expressing optimism that everything will be completed by Opening Day.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this moment in time, we have no concern about being ready for opening day April 6. And we hope we keep it that way,\u201d city administrator Beth Herendeen told reporters (including Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times<\/a> and Kristie Ackert of The Associated Press<\/a>). The city finished reinstalling roof panels last month and is now focused on interior work. That includes repairs to the clubhouses, seating areas, and improvements to the video board.<\/p>\n There\u2019ll also be a new artificial turf. Ackert writes that work on the playing surface could begin in January, while Topkin notes that the team is hopeful that\u2019ll be complete by the end of Spring Training. That\u2019d enable them to familiarize themselves with the turf before regular season games get underway. The Rays begin the season with road series in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Minnesota. They\u2019re set to host the Cubs and Yankees from April 6-12 in their first homestand.<\/p>\n The Rays played the 2025 season at Tampa\u2019s George M. Steinbrenner Field. That\u2019s an outdoor stadium with a capacity around 11,000. While the Trop has been frequently maligned in comparison to other MLB stadiums, it\u2019s no doubt preferable to playing in an A-ball facility.<\/p>\n The Rays\u2019 lease at Tropicana Field initially ran through 2027. That was extended by a year when the facility was taken out of commission. Assuming everything remains on track for next season, the lease will expire after the \u201928 campaign. The City of St. Petersburg was responsible for the repair costs as the lessor and approved a little under $60MM to that end. The Rays remain in search of a long-term stadium deal in the Tampa area. That\u2019s the primary goal for new owner Patrick Zalupski, who purchased the franchise from Stu Sternberg after the latter\u2019s efforts to renegotiate the stadium deal following the 2024 hurricanes stalled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Work continues to repair the hurricane damage that rendered Tropicana Field unplayable in 2025. St. Petersburg officials updated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-324240","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}