Pinellas County to Rays: Make a decision by Sunday on $1.3B stadium project

In a sometimes scolding letter sent earlier this week, Pinellas County Commission Chair Kathleen Peters flatly asks officials with the Tampa Bay Rays if they are in or out on a $1.3 billion stadium deal the team agreed to four months ago. The commission set a deadline — Sunday — for an answer.

“I am requesting that you officially declare your intention regarding this agreement and whether you intend to see it come to fruition,” Peters writes, in part. “The Rays must either indicate in writing that they intend to move forward under the agreement as executed, or provide a clearer Notice of Termination … no later than Dec. 1. Pinellas County has operated in good faith, working toward the stadium deal while balancing the needs of our community after back-to-back hurricanes. If the Rays want out of this agreement, it is your right to terminate the contract. Clear communication about your intentions will be critical to the next steps in this partnership.”

The Rays, in a statement from team President Brian Auld provided Wednesday to the Business Observer, responded to the letter and deadline. "We are eager to work with all partners on a solution for the 2029 season that keeps Major League baseball in Tampa Bay for generations to come," Auld states. "As we always have, we will maintain contact with the city and county as navigate our future." 

The Pinellas County letter is the latest step in the Rays stadium saga that has included tape-measure home run length twists and turns. A summary: 

• In July, the Rays, the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County reached an agreement on an 8 million-square-foot multiuse development wrapped around a new stadium to replace Tropicana Field in the city's Historic Gas Plant district. The project, in which the Rays are partnering with developer Hines, calls for more than 5,400 residential units; 1,250 workforce and attainable housing units; 1.4 million square feet of office and medical space; 750,000 square feet of retail space; 750 hotel rooms; 14 acres of parks and open space; the Woodson African American Museum of Florida; and an amphitheater. The deal includes $600 million in funds from the city and Pinellas County and at least that much from the team. The team — in what seems to be a big sticking point — is also responsible for all cost overruns, per the deal. 
• The Rays announced earlier this month that, after Hurricane Milton damaged Tropicana Field, it will play at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa for the 2025 season. 
• The team sent a letter to Pinellas County officials Nov. 19 saying it had halted all work on the project. The team, in the letter, claims the county failed to live up to its obligation by not approving the issuance of bonds at an Oct. 29 meeting. The team argues that the decision to delay approval of the bonds pushed back the timeline for construction of the new ballpark to open in time for the 2028 season as originally planned. A “2029 ballpark delivery,” the team says in the letter, “would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone...The Rays organization is saddened and stunned by this unfortunate turn of events,” the team writes. “We have put in decades of work and spent more than $50 million to bring this historic project to reality — a project that had been approved by the City of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.
• Hours after the letter was sent Pinellas County Commission voted to again delay a decision on issuing bonds. That vote is now scheduled for Dec. 17. 
• Four days after Pinellas agreed to delay voting on the bonds, the city of St. Petersburg made the same decision. 

At the Nov. 19 Pinellas County Commission meeting some commissioners accused the Rays of grandstanding and seeking to negotiate a signed deal.

Peters, in her letter, addresses that and the Rays statement that the county’s failure to finalize the bonds erases the possibility of 2028 ballpark delivery. “This statement is contrary to the terms of the agreement that provide for no specific timeframe for the county’s action on the bonds, but allow for required actions of the Rays PRIOR to the County’s obligation to offer bonds for sale to be accomplished as late as March 31, 2025. … The supplemental bond resolution is but one of many conditions precedent to the offering of the county bonds for sale that have not been met; many of which are the Rays’s responsibility under the agreement,” Peters writes. “These include but are not limited to providing to the county numerous documents acceptable to the county that have not been supplied to the County — much less determined to be acceptable by the County."

Peters also went a little inside baseball in the letter, noting that Pinellas County Commissioner Brian Scott called Rays President Brian Auld the night before the commission meeting to approve the bonds to ask him to “make a public statement reaffirming commitment to the agreement and that the Rays would do what was necessary to try and remain playing locally.”

“Not only did Mr. Auld remain silent to quell concerns from the public,” Peters writes, “but he went on to complain to the commissioner that the Rays’ revenue was down and that anticipated project costs going up were putting the project in jeopardy. This, again, on the day before the commission met to vote on issuing the bonds. Therefore, the notion that it was the County that “killed the deal” is categorically false based on the Rays President’s own statements prior to the county’s action.”