{"id":222589,"date":"2026-04-07T22:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/222589\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T22:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T22:13:12","slug":"hillsborough-county-tampa-looking-to-vote-on-rays-ballpark-in-early-may","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/222589\/","title":{"rendered":"Hillsborough County, Tampa looking to vote on Rays ballpark in early May"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan said the county is \u201clooking to vote on May 6\u201d on the Rays ballpark, \u201cfollowed by a Tampa City Council vote on May 7,\u201d according to Villamil & Moske of the TAMPA BAY TIMES. Hagan, appearing on St. Petersburg-based WDAE-AM, said that timeline is \u201cnot finalized, but that is our goal.\u201d Villamil & Moske note the Rays\u2019 new ownership group has \u201cmoved swiftly since their introductory news conference in October, saying they\u2019d like to have a ballpark at Hillsborough College\u2019s Dale Mabry campus ready by the spring of 2029.\u201d However, other commissioners have said they will \u201cnot allow the team\u2019s goals to affect their process.\u201d Villamil & Moske note the Rays, county and city staff \u201cmust finalize a proposal for local officials to consider before any workshop, public hearing or vote can be held.\u201d Hagan said, \u201cWe have a little work to do, but progress has been made on reaching an agreement on a term sheet. Once that happens, then we will go to the public and sit down and have an honest debate on the benefits of this overall project.\u201d Tampa City Council chairperson Alan Clendenin said there is \u201csome wiggle room\u201d in the timeline, but \u201cit\u2019s not a lot\u201d (TAMPA BAY TIMES, 4\/7<\/a>). In Tampa, Emma Behrmann notes a vote on May 6 would be three weeks from the \u201cApril 15 date the Rays most recently sought.\u201d Initially, the team was \u201ctargeting April 1 for a county vote and April 2 for a city vote\u201d (TAMPA BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL, 4\/7<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan said the county is \u201clooking to vote on May 6\u201d on the Rays…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3816,3817,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-222589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222589","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=222589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}