Herendeen said Rays representatives traveled to Arizona to view a similar roof structure at State Farm Stadium, and the city consulted with Geiger Engineering, the Trop\u2019s original dome designer.<\/p>\n
With the stadium now \u201cdried in,\u201d bowl air conditioning has been restored. <\/p>\n
Workers are installing new drywall in the broadcast and media rooms, repainting seats, repairing slightly bent lighting structures, and replacing electrical systems. <\/p>\n
Flooring for the 360 walkway and the Viva Deck in left field will be installed this month, and new turf is expected to arrive in mid-January.<\/p>\n
All renovations are scheduled to be finished by March, well before the Rays reopen the ballpark on April 6th against the Chicago Cubs.<\/p>\n
Responding to a question from St. Pete Rising, Herendeen said MLB representatives toured the stadium about a month ago and continue to join weekly calls with the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cMajor League Baseball standards have evolved over time,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were things damaged during the storm, and our expectation was to replace them in kind, but the MLB standard has changed, so the conversations were a little about what was a storm-related repair or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
For instance, the backstop netting behind home plate was damaged. To meet MLB\u2019s preference to extend the netting to the foul poles, the city will tap the Capital Repair, Renewal and Replacement Sinking Fund Account, which is funded by naming rights revenue and ticket fees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Herendeen said Rays representatives traveled to Arizona to view a similar roof structure at State Farm Stadium, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-71570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","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\/71570","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=71570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}