The latest stadium news from Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg was that he was standing by his $150 million contribution figure, but that it "could change" if season ticket, sponsorship, and other business partnerships exceeded the team's projections for a new stadium.
Exceeding the team's expectations seems like a longshot at this stage in the game, but it was a call to Tampa to put its money where its mouth is and start coughing up either stadium money or season-long commitments now. But Marc Topkins details:
The $150-million...allows them "to make a contribution, pay off our debt over 25 years – whatever it has to be – and still do what we want to do, which is put a more successful product on the field. … For us to be able to go in and break even again at a $65M payroll, it doesn't make sense. We want to be able to jump the payroll if we're taking that sort of risk."
$150 million, paid over 25 years, with tax-free municipal bonds, is only like $8-10 million a year. The Rays want to pay just $8-10 million a year for a new stadium.
That's what they're paying catcher WILSON RAMOS next year.
It's a good time to turn the clock back 6.5 years
to a Shadow of the Stadium post from 2011, "What Stu Sternberg is Thinking." An excerpt:
A new stadium could represent $200 million in value to the Rays, including tens of millions in revenue in each of the first few years. And while Sternberg would put a portion of that money into his own pocket, the rest would undoubtedly go back into the team, creating a better product for fans. He sees it as a win-win.
But the problem is that a new stadium would cost substantially more than $200 million. So Sternberg needs help.
While private developers may be eager to donate land for a new park, there’s no financial gain to be had from building the actual stadium for a team. That leaves a funding gap for a retractable-roof stadium of approximately $300 million.
The numbers may have grown due to inflation, and we honestly may never know what percentage of new revenues Sternberg will put toward payroll versus toward franchise investors. But one thing's for sure: that funding gap is monstrous and Hillsborough County still has no idea how to make up the difference in Tampa.
I really can't believe how easy some are making it for Stu Sternberg and the Rays to leverage taxpayers.
Days after I warned how the Rays' initial low-ball $150 million offer and inflated $800 million estimate on a stadium was designed to reduce the expectation of how much the team should ultimately contribute...the Tampa Bay Times dedicated its lead editorial to explaining how Tampa Bay should only expect Sternberg to contribute "in the $160-$280 million range," since "recent history shows the typical team paying 20 to 35 percent of the cost of a Major League Baseball stadium."
Except that figure includes incredibly unpopular and lopsided deals where teams screwed taxpayers, like the potentially-illegal, "worst sports stadium deal ever" in Atlanta where the Braves suggested taking on approximately half of their new stadium's cost, only to pile a hundred million dollars on taxpayers later, reducing their load significantly.
Or the Marlins' deal, which the Times' called "one of the most ridiculed deals in recent memory," before suggesting the team's 24% contribution to the stadium was a model to be copied.
By the way, how did the price jump to $800 million? The Oakland Athletics, the Rays' roommate at the bottom of baseball's attendance list, recently announced plans for a $500 million stadium that, get this, THEY WILL PAY FOR!
That's right. A team struggling nearly as much at the ticket counter as the Rays said its new home will be privately financed. That's how it should be.
Unfortunately, that won't be how it goes down in Tampa Bay.
For, as I've written since 2009, the whole Rays Stadium Saga (and almost every other pro team's stadium campaign) has been designed as a showdown between competing communities to see who will offer the team more money.
Except, Tampa doesn't have much to offer. So, expect a few more years of hardball negotiations, leveraging, and posturing - there's no happy ending to the Stadium Saga on the immediate horizon.
Tomorrow morning, Atlanta will blow up a perfectly-good stadium because, mostly, it has a roof that doesn't retract.
The stadium, fit to host Super Bowls and decades worth of SEC championships will be imploded after just 25 short years...once again proving that stadiums have pretty much zero equity (or in the case of Atlanta or Montreal's domes, negative equity) once a team decides its done playing there.
For a long time, stadiums were considered investments that would pay dividends for 40 or more years. That includes buildings such as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Yankee Stadium, and Dodger Stadium. Like a skyscraper, the facilities were simply built to last.
But the pressure on cities to "keep up with the Joneses" has slashed the perceived lifespan of a stadium in half, often eliminating the net benefits to the communities that spend huge amounts of money to build them.
Few pro teams stay in one place for more than a dozen years now without demanding more taxpayer-subsidized upgrades. And by the time a stadium turns 20, it's already time to plan its replacement.
New stadiums are more state-of-the-art than ever...which makes it all-the-more ironic that society feels the need to replace the half-billion-dollar buildings every 20 years.
Before you dismiss this as just crazy Georgians being Georgians...check out this 2010 Shadow of the Stadium post that suggests no city in America is safe from the 20-year-old itch: "Replace the Georgia Dome" Talk Troublesome
But then I realized the news of Stu Sternberg estimating the Rays would put only $150 million toward a new stadium in Tampa Bay was published Wednesday night.
That means the team seems to want to fund a smaller portion of a new stadium than they were in 2008, when they offered up the same $150 million for a less-expensive stadium in St. Pete. Adjusted for inflation, their 2017 opening bid is actually 13% less money than they were willing to spend ten years ago.
Longtime columnist Joe Henderson asked if Sternberg was joking. And one Pinellas County Commissioner reacted this way:
1) The funding gap is ENORMOUS; and maybe bigger than even this blog thought
Commissioner Ken Hagan has repeatedly said there would "never again be a sweatheart deal" like the one the Glazers got at Raymond James Stadium. Except, as this video shows, the Rays' stadium is likely to be WAY more expensive, even when adjusting the Buccaneers' 1998 haul for inflation:
There is no way Hillsborough (or even the deeper-pocketed Pinellas) is coming up with $650 million in public cash for a new stadium, so they two sides had better start hawking peanuts to private donors who may have a sweet spot for baseball.
2) Sternberg knows $650 million isn't happening
So why did he hit everyone with the sticker shock of $650 million this week?
Either because it's the next step in Sternberg's exit plan, finally coming clean that not even a new ballpark means significant new revenue unless someone else pays for it (as this blog has written dozens of times)...
And/or he's setting public expectations high - and his initial offering low - so that coughing up $350-400 million in public money later may seem like a deal. It's a topic this blog covered in 2016:
We should end the conversation about a retractable roof right now. The Marlins' don't use theirs, the region can't afford one, and the technology has come a long way since the Rays' last stadium foray in 2008.
But Sternberg knows there is no appetite to fund major subsidies for a new stadium in Tampa: not on Hillsborough's county commission, where four of seven commissioners have already spoken out against any tax funding for a stadium; not in Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn's office, where he just had to fight for a controversial tax increase to pay for basic city services and wastewater upgrades; and not in the statehouse, where several bills aim at banning all sorts of stadium subsidies and the biggest proponent of stadium investment, State Sen. Jack Latvala, is sitting on the sidelines as allegations of sexual misconduct play out.
So, I guess now in 2017, the team all of a sudden knows what kind of ballpark they want to build and generally what kind of revenues it can expect from it? Does that mean the Rays will finally be a little more forthcoming about financial issues?
Because three years ago...
Prez Auld paused when asked what #Rays will do to prevent a "Miami Marlins situation" in Tampa Bay - said they'll be nothing but transparent
Transparency has not been a priority here, and little has changed since I said this 12 months ago:
We know from the Marlins' new stadium that a new park, even in the wrong place, will increase a franchise's value by hundreds of millions. So c'mon Stu, show us the money.
Ken Hagan basically confirmed my theory Wednesday that he gave the news of the Ybor City proposed stadium site to a few friendly reporters - before his fellow commissioners, who said they were "embarrassed" by his secretive move - in order to screw "a reporter" who he believed had uncovered the news.
Hagan on #Rays announcement last month: "A reporter somehow got wind of it and I wanted to make sure it was properly rolled out."
So that was "properly," commissioner?
Actually, he admitted it wasn't Wednesday, promising he "will try to do a better job communicating," and essentially apologizing to Mayor Bob Buckhorn & Hillsborough commissioners for going all lone wolf on announcing his pet project...but he said it had nothing to do with influencing the St. Pete mayor's race, as some had suggested.
I actually believe him. Hagan wanted to screw me for this story, and make sure I didn't unveil his beautiful baby.
In fact, here's the exact moment when I told him I had public records he was willfully neglecting to turn over to me, in accordance with state law:
That moment when Ken Hagan realizes you have public records related to the #Rays he claimed didn't exist... pic.twitter.com/dF07ZtPg1X
Now granted, Hagan tried to keep his cool and didn't take time examining what exactly I was holding in my hand (it wasn't the land use agreements he feared it was)...but just a week later, he took his victory lap as the architect of the masterful Ybor deal.
Except the masterful deal forgot one thing: financing. And Hillsborough doesn't have any money for roads, let alone a new stadium. Oh, and Stu Sternberg said later on Wednesday the team would only be looking at a $150 million contribution to a stadium.
Good luck with that, commissioner. You now own that problem.
Oh, and a potentially bigger problem he also owns? Proof public documents existed that he seemingly refused to turn over - a possible criminal violation of state statutes.
The MLB owner/GM meetings are this week in Orlando, and for the first time since Ken Hagan announced the preferred Tampa site for a tug-of-war with St. Petersburg possible new Rays stadium, we will hear from Commissioner Rob Manfred.
Which of the following talking points should we expect Manfred to hit?
"We are encouraged by the progress..."
"Time is of the essence..."
"This issue is on our 'front-burner'..."
"Blah blah blah blah Montreal..."
"We look forward to hearing more about the offers on the table ($$$)..."
"We can't do this without the support of the community ($$$$$)..."
UPDATE: Manfred said Thursday,"There needs to be support from the community in order to be successful in completing it."
One thing's for sure - the next step in this process is MLB and the Rays seeing how much money they can extricate from public coffers. So unless Manfred is willing to shed some new light on how much is expected...or how much the league/team will put up...don't expect any real news to come out of this week's press conference.
Ten weeks after a razor-tight primary, two St. Pete mayors duked it out in a run-off for control over city hall for the next four years. And it appears Mayor Rick Kriseman will hold off former mayor, Rick Baker, by a two-to-three-point margin.
Of course, a mayor will leave many footprints on a city's legacy, but one significant influence that Kriseman will continue to have pertains to the future of the Tampa Bay Rays and Tampa Bay Rowdies, both of whom currently play in old St. Pete stadiums.
As I wrote this summer, St. Pete seems to be too small for two top-level teams, and Baker had been a natural ally of the Rowdies after quarterbacking their MLS 2 St. Pete campaign. Meanwhile, Kriseman has been a reliable partner to the Rays and already offered the team significant public dollars that would, at the very least, help them leverage more out of Hillsborough County if they aren't serious about sharing in the redevelopment opportunities at Tropicana Field (also explains why the Rays contributed more than $80,000 to Kriseman's campaign.
Now, with the election in the books, it would seem the next domino to fall in the Stadium Saga would belong to the Rays, who could call a press conference to discuss their next move (seeking money) as soon as this week. But that may not prove to be a pleasant - or brief - chapter in this saga.
Also newsworthy on Election Day in St. Pete - Gina Driscoll, who campaigned on an open approach to supporting and funding a new Rays stadium, beat out Justin Bean, who was a consultant on the Tropicana Field redevelopment project and said "no public funds" should be used for the stadium other than infrastructure and surrounding development.
In D2, Brandi Gabbard, who liked the idea of a Derby Lane stadium in North St. Pete, beat Barclay Harless, who promised "not one dime" for the Rays until the city gets its sewer problems under control. And in D4, incumbent Darden Rice, who has supported Kriseman's path on the Stadium Saga, knocked off 21-year-old challenger Jerick Johnson.
