Residents learn that a stadium next to a college will let them work, live, learn and play, though not necessarily in that order or at that price.
TAMPA, United States (The On Deck News) – A non-binding agreement for a $2.3 billion Rays ballpark on the Hillsborough College Dale Mabry campus has residents examining the fine print with the intensity of people who have been told it will be fun. According to the team’s announcement of the memorandum of understanding, county commissioners and the Tampa City Council were expected to vote the following week, a timeline that local officials describe as “brisk” and local taxpayers describe as “a timeline.”
What the Memorandum Actually Says
The plan, as reported, calls for a fixed-roof ballpark with roughly 31,000 fixed seats, set across Dale Mabry Highway from Raymond James Stadium and beside Steinbrenner Field, which means a visitor will soon be able to park, look in three directions and see three different stadiums and a number of questions. The Rays would pay about $1.27 billion, roughly 55 percent of the cost, plus all overruns, while the public contribution would be capped at $976 million, made up of about $796 million from Hillsborough County and $180 million from the City of Tampa.
The county would own the ballpark and the team would lease and operate it for 35 years, with five optional three-year extensions. The current Tropicana Field use agreement expires after the 2028 season, and the team hopes to open the new ballpark for Opening Day 2029. The team calls the surrounding project a privately financed “work-live-learn-play” neighborhood, which linguists at the University of South Tampa Institute of Hyphens say is the longest unbroken verb string ever approved by a planning board.
“Work, live, learn and play is a very ambitious sequence,” said Marisol Quintanilla-Boyd, a Hillsborough County resident of 31 years who has attended every public meeting since her second grandchild was born. “I would like to add ‘wait,’ as in wait for the bus, wait for the traffic, and wait for the second phase of anything. That’s the real fifth verb.”
Public Comment, Annotated
The county has already published rules for the public comment period, a text so carefully drafted that several residents have asked whether it is also a poem.
HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY BOARD PROCEDURES FOR BALLPARK COMMENT. Speakers will have two minutes. A speaker may not use any portion of those two minutes to mention the word “Tropicana,” the word “Montreal,” or the phrase “this is how it always starts.” A speaker who wishes to speak in favor must register at the green table. A speaker who wishes to speak against must register at the other green table. Both tables are the same table. – Office of the Clerk, County Center
The Rays, who reached the World Series this fall only to fall to the Milwaukee Brewers in what Milwaukee coverage called one of the most dominant postseason performances in MLB history, now face the harder challenge of persuading a county to finance the thing next to a college. Team officials said they remain optimistic, in the way a person standing in a reasonably full stadium parking lot is optimistic.
The Math of the Cap
Economists at the Bay Area Institute for Big Rectangles say the public cap is the most interesting feature of the proposal. A cap, they explained, means the county’s share cannot rise above $976 million, which is slightly comforting until a resident asks what happens when a cap meets a crane.
Local stand-up Dewey Abernathy-Soto, who works the Tuesday open mic at a comedy club near the airport, says the cost math has changed the way Tampa talks about money. “We used to say a million dollars is a lot,” Abernathy-Soto told a room of 22, most of them related to him. “Now a million dollars is what the county uses to buy the cones around the stadium. A billion is the number you hear right before somebody says ‘but think of the jobs.’ I’m not saying I’m against jobs. I’m saying I’d like one where I don’t have to say ‘work, live, learn and play’ unironically.”
- Estimated number of residents who read the full memorandum: 4,100, according to a survey of 400 residents who were asked how many people they thought had.
- Percentage who believe the roof is “to keep out the rain”: 62.
- Percentage who believe the roof is “to keep out the questions”: 38.
- Cost of one hot dog at the new ballpark, as estimated by a man selling hot dogs outside the old one: “More than the rest of this sentence.”
From the Ballpark to the Barn
The financing structure has reminded some residents of a larger American pattern in which the money for gleaming new facilities arrives with few details about who gets what. It echoes a recent report that processors found 15 billion dollars for factories while farmers got nothing extra, a scenario Tampa residents recognize in the way a person recognizes a coat they once owned.
Fan groups say the Rays’ farm system will survive the move. “The prospects are fine,” said Beatriz Okonkwo-Lindqvist, the president of a fan club that meets monthly in a Brandon sports bar. “They’ll be playing on the field. It’s the rest of us who will have to buy the field.”
What Happens Next
Officials stress that the document is a memorandum, not a contract, which is the polite way of saying that every part of it can still become a different part of it. A later team reaction piece described the agreement as a monumental step, which is the kind of phrase that gets used when it is not yet clear which direction the steps are going.
The team has promised that the new ballpark will offer a modern fan experience, a major improvement over the current building’s famously dramatic ceiling, which could be described as “the sky, but angrier.” For updates, readers are welcome to follow Bohiney, where the staff has already begun a countdown to Opening Day 2029, a date many have noted is only eleven or twelve public hearings away.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/