There may be as many as 10 human bodies buried beneath the asphalt and soil of Tropicana Field\u2019s Parking Lot 1.<\/p>\n
If they\u2019re in fact under there, they were originally interred at Oaklawn Cemetery, which stood on the site between 1906 and 1926.<\/p>\n
City Council voted last week to fund the latest step in a multi-part exploration and, if necessary, exhumation process that began in 2020, and continued as plans for the area\u2019s redevelopment were formulated. One proviso insisted on by the Council was that the latest work will not begin until the 2026 baseball season has ended, in September or October.<\/p>\n
(They\u2019ve been in the ground for a century or more. What\u2019s a couple of months?)<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s vote was unanimous (with Councilmember Corey Givens Jr. absent) to pay the Canada-based Stantec Consulting Services $378,896 for \u201cground truthing,\u201d which means carefully digging to determine whether underground objects detected by Stantec\u2019s ground-penetrating radar are indeed coffins containing human remains. Or construction debris. Or something else altogether.<\/p>\n
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The 10-acre Oaklawn cemetery, at the intersection of 16th Street and 5th Avenue S., closed in 1926. Known remains were disinterred and relocated to other city graveyards when construction commenced on the Royal Court Apartments, a public housing complex, in 1949.<\/p>\n
The St. Petersburg Housing Authority purchased the complex in 1966, and renamed it Laurel Park. Earmarked in those segregated times for Black housing, the 167 two-bedroom apartments were demolished in the 1980s, along with the neighboring Gas Plant neighborhoods, to make way for Tropicana Field.<\/p>\n
Records from the Oaklawn era are incomplete. Ground-penetrating radar identified areas on the southern border of Lot 1 that may well be gravesites, and according to existing paperwork, the Masonic Lodge purchased several plots in the area after the turn of the 20th century.<\/p>\n
As Planning Director Derek Kilborn told councilmembers at their March 5 meeting, the discovery of that information \u201cwas really important because it can also help us match up potential burials and individuals\u2019 names and families.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce anything, as part of this exploratory analysis, is identified, the first step is to stop work and contact the state archaeological officer,\u201d said Capital Improvements Director Brajesh Prayman. And that\u2019s a regulated process, governed by Florida statutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the first thing that will happen if anything is identified,\u201d Prayman said.<\/p>\n
Oaklawn Cemetery was for white residents only; two smaller graveyards to the south, Evergreen and Moffett, were reserved for Black residents and veterans, respectively.<\/p>\n