{"id":157340,"date":"2026-02-16T17:13:34","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T17:13:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/157340\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T17:13:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T17:13:34","slug":"60-million-tropicana-field-renovation-nearly-complete-ahead-of-rays-return-to-downtown-st-pete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/157340\/","title":{"rendered":"$60 million Tropicana Field renovation nearly complete ahead of Rays\u2019 return to downtown St. Pete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">A new roof stretches overhead, the stadium lights are back in place, and a thick layer of fresh artificial turf now spans the field floor as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/rays\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> prepare to return home to downtown St. Pete.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The City of St. Petersburg is nearing completion of a $59.7 million renovation and remediation of Tropicana Field ahead of the Rays\u2019 home opener against the Chicago Cubs on Monday, April 6th.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">\u201cFrom here, there are lots of small things that need to be done\u2014some drywall, aiming the lights to make sure they are in the right place, getting the lines on the field\u2014but the big lift items are complete,\u201d said Beth Herendeen, the city\u2019s Administration and Finance Managing Director, during a media tour of the stadium. \u201cWe are on schedule and on budget and fully anticipate being ready for opening day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The most visible milestone is the new roof. The original fabric roof was shredded during Hurricane Milton in 2024, exposing the stadium interior to months of rainwater intrusion and causing widespread internal damage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">The replacement roof, made of a thicker, stronger fiberglass membrane and engineered to withstand winds of up to 165 miles per hour, was manufactured in Germany, assembled in China, and air-freighted to Alaska before arriving in St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new roof stretches overhead, the stadium lights are back in place, and a thick layer of fresh&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-157340","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157340","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=157340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}