Fixing The Trop's Roof And Figuring Out The Future Of The Rays Florida Matters podcast

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Fixing the Trop's roof and figuring out the future of the Rays

5d ago 27:59

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You know the Tampa Bay Rays. If you’re a baseball fan, you follow the wins and losses. But if you’re a taxpayer in St Petersburg or Pinellas County, the ongoing stadium saga may grab your attention.

The city of St Petersburg is fixing the damaged roof of Tropicana Field. Across the Bay in Tampa - the team plays its home games at Steinbrenner Field
But here’s the question you - and a lot of your neighbors - really want answered once and for all: Will the team stick around long-term after the one-point-three billion dollar deal to redevelop the stadium collapsed?

WUSF’s Steve Newborn, and Tampa Bay Times reporter Colleen Wright stopped by Florida Matters to help get you caught up with the latest twists and turns with the Rays and why this story reverberates far beyond the Trop.

“The [St. Petersburg] mayor [Ken Welch] won't work with this ownership group,” Wright added.
“I know that that sentiment is the same, also at the county level, they feel the same way, and they also feel like, if the Rays couldn't make it work with 700 plus million dollars in public funding, would it ever work? I don't know.”
Newborn said negotiations on a new stadium go back decades.
“This was pitched by Mayor Welch as a way to right what he views as an historical wrong. He had relatives who grew up in that old Gas Plant neighborhood which was bulldozed back in the 1980s to build this [Stadium], you know, which was by no means a sure thing. It was kind of ‘build it and they will come’, right?”

“So all this was seen as basically spurring a development that would create new taxes in the area around the stadium, right, that would make it profitable.”

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