The Tampa Bay Rays have privately shared a new cost estimate for the stadium they\u2019re hoping to build in Tampa: $2.3 billion, not including surrounding development.<\/p>\n
That figure, told to a Tampa Bay Times reporter Jan. 27 by Tampa Sports Authority CEO Eric Hart, is $1 billion more than what the Rays had proposed to build a stadium in St. Petersburg two years ago.<\/p>\n
It came out after a meeting of Sports Authority board members on Jan. 27, where Hart was peppered with questions about a preliminary agreement approved by Hillsborough College\u2019s district board of trustees last week.<\/p>\n
The agreement presents a roadmap of what needs to be negotiated before the Rays build a stadium and mixed-use development at its Dale Mabry campus. But the team has not publicly shared details of its plans, including what it intends to ask the public to contribute, or a stadium design and cost estimate.<\/p>\n
Hart said the agency\u2019s consultants are running numbers the Rays shared with them, and their analysis should help inform the public agency through upcoming negotiations. He said stadium construction firm Skanska is reviewing what he said was a $2.3 billion cost projection for the stadium by working with a price estimator. Another consultant, AECOM, is reviewing the proposed mixed-use development sought to complement the stadium.<\/p>\n
Hart said the Rays are providing AECOM with an economic analysis that the team has done on both the stadium and mixed-use development, and the company is reviewing it. Hart said he has not seen that report.<\/p>\n
Skanska has built MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, home of the New York Giants and the New York Jets, and other entertainment venues.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Rays did not immediately return phone calls and text messages seeking comment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to do our part. We\u2019re going to write a big check. We already wrote a big one (a reported $1.7 billion) to buy the team. We\u2019re going to write another one to build a ballpark,\u201d Rays CEO Ken Babby said on a recent episode of the \u201cHunks Talking Junk\u201d podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we need a great public\/private partnership where the community, whether it be the county or the city or both, the state, all come together to build something really special here for Tampa Bay. That\u2019s how we\u2019re thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last March, the Rays under prior ownership walked away from a $6.5 billion development that included a $1.3 billion stadium. St. Petersburg and Pinellas County agreed to pay more than $700 million for the stadium and surrounding roads and sewers.<\/p>\n
The Athletics\u2019 baseball stadium in Las Vegas, slated to open for the 2028 season, is projected to cost $2 billion, per ESPN. That price tag has gone up considerably twice, rising from $1.5 billion to $1.75 billion to the current estimate.<\/p>\n
Sports Authority board members, meeting as its finance committee, unanimously voted Jan. 27 to recommend asking Tampa and Hillsborough County to conduct their own economic study before considering any public subsidies on the Dale Mabry proposal. That request was led by its finance chairperson, Andy Scaglione, who made clear at a meeting earlier this month that the Sports Authority would not be a \u201crubber stamp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, before you ask for public subsidies, you need to find out what\u2019s going to go in the coffers. You know, what\u2019s the … return on investment?\u201d he said. \u201cSo that\u2019s where I\u2019m going with it. Without it, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re being good stewards of the [taxpayers\u2019] money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hart said there have not been negotiations, only talks about what the Rays are hoping to build. He said the Rays would like to work on a similar, nonbinding framework with the Sports Authority.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why you\u2019re seeing me doing economic analysis, because I think that would give better answers to be able to answer all your questions,\u201d Hart said. \u201cSo right now, I would tell you that there\u2019s ingredients, but there\u2019s no soup. So it might be premature for us to say they\u2019re at a point or not. There\u2019s nothing like that at that level.\u201d<\/p>\n
New board member C. Dennis Carlton Jr. seconded the motion for recommending an economic study. He said he wanted to know when the Sports Authority would have a seat at the negotiating table.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re leaning on us as businessmen or whatever, to look at it and to come up with a good game plan that makes sense for this county and city and taxpayers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Board member Joe Robinson spoke at last week\u2019s Hillsborough College meeting in favor of the partnership with the Rays, calling it an \u201ceconomic engine\u201d that \u201cwill benefit the West Tampa area.\u201d On Jan. 27, he expressed support for the study.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s got to happen,\u201d Robinson said.<\/p>\n
Nine out of 11 members of the Sports Authority board attended the Jan. 27 meeting. Tampa City Council member Alan Clendenin and Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, a proponent of bringing the Rays to Tampa or Hillsborough, are not members of the finance committee and did not attend the meeting. The full board will vote Feb. 3 on whether to recommend conducting an economic study to Tampa and Hillsborough County.<\/p>\n
\u201cAndy\u2019s insightful questions … are very legitimate,\u201d said board member Don DeFosset, as it relates to the tentative agreement approach by the Hillsborough College board. \u201cIt raises all those questions; it doesn\u2019t answer everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tampa Bay Rays have privately shared a new cost estimate for the stadium they\u2019re hoping to build…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138136,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[22641,29208,110,135,3815,137,136,11187],"class_list":{"0":"post-138135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tampa","8":"tag-hillsborough-college","9":"tag-rays-stadium","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tampa","12":"tag-tampa-bay-rays","13":"tag-tampa-headlines","14":"tag-tampa-news","15":"tag-tampa-sports-authority"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}