Tampa CRA pushes Rays-related redevelopment changes to November

The next phase of Tampa’s Rays stadium deal will have to wait a little longer after the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) board postponed action on a series of redevelopment-area changes tied to the project.

The Tampa CRA continued the item until its Nov. 12 meeting. The proposal would direct CRA attorney Clifford Shepard to prepare the documents necessary to implement what the agenda describes as the “CRA promises made in the Tampa Bay Rays contract” and bring them back to the board.

Shepard told members that he still needs to receive the relevant materials before that work can be completed. 

The delay pushes back the first formal step toward implementing several CRA-related promises that became an important part of the compromise that won enough support from the Tampa City Council for the Rays stadium last month.

The agreement involves several changes to Tampa’s community redevelopment areas, which use future property-tax growth within designated neighborhoods to pay for redevelopment projects.

The Rays deal would remove the stadium property from the Drew Park CRA, extend the lifespan of the Drew Park, East Tampa and West Tampa CRAs, and reduce Tampa’s future contribution to the Downtown CRA by 50%.

Those changes are also tied to how the Rays plan to finance infrastructure around the stadium.

The city of Tampa is contributing $80 million for eligible public infrastructure, but an earlier version of the deal called for the Drew Park CRA to contribute an additional $100 million directly toward the project. That contribution was dropped.

Instead, the stadium property will be carved out of Drew Park and placed within a new financing district of its own.

A new Community Development District, or CDD, would then raise that $100 million through private debt that would be repaid by future property-tax growth from the development itself.

That revenue would be split among Tampa, Hillsborough County and the CDD under the stadium financing plan, including provisions requiring Tampa’s $80 million contribution to be reimbursed with interest.

None of those changes happened automatically when the City Council approved the stadium agreement.

The CRA board was expected Thursday to begin putting them into motion. Instead, that work will now return to City Hall in November.