New year, same Rays: Tampa baseball team's search for a new home continues

1. Despite the team’s outstanding track record of success on the field, the Tampa Bay Rays — whose lease at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg expires after the 2027 season — have endured multiple failed attempts to secure a new home over the past few years, starting with the 2018 debacle in Ybor City and culminating in the controversial “Sister City” split-season plan with Montreal that was quashed by Major League Baseball.

Thus, a new year once again arrives with little to no clarity about the Rays’ future in the Tampa Bay region, but an even greater sense of urgency given St. Pete’s desire to move ahead with redevelopment of the 86-acre Trop site. Four proposals for the property, including one from the Rays organization itself, were submitted in early December. But less than two weeks later, news broke that Populous, a Kansas City-based architecture firm, had submitted a design for a new stadium that would be built on waterfront property, just east of downtown Tampa, that prominent local developer Daryl Shaw is under contract to acquire.