Tampa Bay Rays' $6.5B Ballpark Development Halted Over Funding Delay
Plans for a $6.5B Tampa Bay Rays stadium-anchored development are officially on ice due to lack of county funding.
The St. Petersburg mixed-use district was approved by Pinellas County, Florida, commissioners this summer with a 2028 delivery timeline. The county agreed to provide bonds to offset some of the costs for the $1.3B stadium. A final, routine vote to approve the county's portion of bond financing was set for October but was delayed to Tuesday afternoon.
On Tuesday morning, Rays Presidents Brian Auld and Matt Silverman released a letter to commissioners saying failure to approve the bonds last month makes the 2028 deadline impossible to meet.
The letter says the county needed to finalize the bonds before Nov. 5 for the timeline to stay on track and avoid a higher price tag.
“As we have made clear at every step of this process, a 2029 ballpark delivery would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone,” Auld and Silverman said.
The entire project, the ballpark and Historic Gas Plant District, has been halted as a result.
The development is a partnership between the Rays and Hines to develop the 86 acres that house Tropicana Field, the Rays’ current stadium. The plan, announced last September, includes 8M SF of mixed-use development along with the ballpark. The $6.5B redevelopment is expected to be the largest project of its kind in Tampa Bay's history.
Builders, contractors and architects have stopped work on the entire project, which the Rays have put more than $50M toward.
Hines and the Rays didn't respond to requests for comment before publication.
The delays are particularly salient because Tropicana Field was damaged by Hurricane Milton. Amid $50B in insured property losses to Florida, the storm ripped the roof off the stadium.
The #Rays released photos of the damage inside Tropicana Field in the days following Hurricane Milton, and it's catastrophic. pic.twitter.com/wmfccwjT1i
— Ryan Bass (@Ry_Bass) November 18, 2024
The Rays' letter says that despite Hurricanes Helene and Milton, the plan for 2028 was still approved and on track as the Rays met their terms of the deal, including securing financing and 50% of the design documents.
After Milton, Hines said it would continue to support the Rays on the project as damages were assessed.
