{"id":45812,"date":"2025-11-13T23:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/45812\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T23:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T23:36:07","slug":"st-petersburg-mayor-ken-welch-open-to-extending-tampa-bay-rays-lease-at-tropicana-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/45812\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch open to extending Tampa Bay Rays\u2019 lease at Tropicana Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said that he is \u201copen to extending\u201d the Rays\u2019 lease at Tropicana Field \u201cpast the 2028 expiration date,\u201d according to Emma Behrmann of the TAMPA BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL. The city-owned ballpark is \u201cundergoing nearly\u201d $60M in repairs after Hurricane Milton damaged its roof<\/a> in Oct. 2024. Under the terms of the lease agreement that runs through 2028, the city is \u201cobligated to pay for the repairs.\u201d Welch said that the city had \u201cgood initial conversations\u201d with new Rays majority owner Patrick Zalupski and CEO Ken Babby, but \u201cdespite new ownership, the team needs to rebuild its relationship with both the city and Pinellas County.\u201d Behrmann notes while Welch is \u201copen to extending the Rays\u2019 stay in St. Pete,\u201d he will \u201cnot wait to continue the Historic Gas Plant district redevelopment.\u201d Welch said that the city is \u201cpast waiting for a stadium.\u201d Behrmann notes the Rays, under former owner Stu Sternberg, walked away from a deal to redevelop the ballpark and build a mixed-use district earlier this year<\/a>. The Rays\u2019 new ownership group is \u201csaid to be pursuing stadium sites in Hillsborough County\u201d with an \u201caggressive timeframe in mind.\u201d However, the construction of a new MLB ballpark \u201ctakes years.\u201d It would \u201cbreak ground only after a lengthy public process to secure funding for the project, which means opening day in 2029 isn\u2019t just an aggressive goal — it\u2019s unlikely to happen\u201d (TAMPA BAY BUSINESS JOURNAL, 11\/13<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch said that he is \u201copen to extending\u201d the Rays\u2019 lease at Tropicana Field…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3817,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-45812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-mlb","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45812","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=45812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}