TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Hundreds of business leaders with the Westshore Alliance are supporting a new ballpark in Hillsborough County. The group sent a letter of support to the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If approved, the Rays\u2019 ballpark would potentially be located in the Westshore district on Hillsborough College\u2019s Dale Mabry campus. Tampa Bay Rays President Ken Babby shared a presentation with leaders in the Westshore Alliance last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Westshore Alliance Executive Director Michael Maurino said a new stadium in the Westshore district is all about economic development.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf that site is redeveloped, it creates the best possible scenario for return on investment,\u201d Maurino said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With a new source of property tax revenue, he believes a new stadium would have a financial impact in the Westshore area and countywide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is generated in Westshore from property tax value, is then dispersed throughout the city and Hillsborough County, so there\u2019s a real policy need to put a project like the Rays stadium in Westshore, because then the growth of Westshore will fund projects all across the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County,\u201d Maurino explained.<\/p>\n
Anthony Saravanos is president of Greenleaf Capital, a real estate company in the Westshore district. The company has three properties in the Westshore area. He believes a stadium would bring more demand, similar to when the Midtown development and SkyCenter One were built.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat rising tide created a benefit to all the other commercial property owners that had offices in the Westshore district,\u201d Saravanos said. And he said that showed in the amount owners were able to charge per square foot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir rates may have been $20 and now maybe they\u2019re in the low $30s,\u201d Saravanos explained.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s one reason why Saravanos also supports a new stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cA rising tide lifts all boats,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Critics have argued that public dollars should not go towards a $2.3 billion ballpark. Maurino said a public-private partnership with the Tampa Bay Rays will pay off for the Bay area over time. Saravanos agrees.<\/p>\n
\u201cProgress requires a little pain,\u201d Saravanos said.<\/p>\n
View the letter from the Westshore Alliance below:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Hundreds of business leaders with the Westshore Alliance are supporting a new ballpark in Hillsborough…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265018,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,558,770,4252,276,2200,115,29208,135,3815,137,136,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-265017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-community-news","tag-dalia-dangerfield","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-news","tag-rays-stadium","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265017","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=265017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265017\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}