Rays Stadium Vote Set for Aug. 27, and Two Hillsborough Commissioners Who Said Yes in May Are Now Balking

Tampa City Council has scheduled Aug. 27 for what could be the decisive vote on a final financing agreement for a $2.3 billion Tampa Bay Rays ballpark in Drew Park, and the roughly $976 million in city and county money riding on it is suddenly less certain than it looked in May. Two Hillsborough County commissioners who voted yes on the original non-binding deal, Chris Boles and Christine Miller, have now raised objections to the revised terms. Boles said he would vote no as the deal stands today.

The county is carrying most of the public cost, about $796 million of the $976 million cap, with roughly $180 million from the city. So a couple of flipped votes on the commission matters as much as anything the council does next Thursday.

The council set a vote on a contract it had not seen

The 4-3 vote on Aug. 20 put the item on the agenda before the definitive documents were public. Council member Bill Carlson made the motion late in a four-hour evening meeting, and it came with a string attached: the documents had to be loaded onto the city's online agenda platform by 5 p.m. Friday. Lynn Hurtak, Guido Maniscalco and Charlie Miranda voted against scheduling the vote. Hurtak said plainly she had not seen the contract. Neither, Carlson said, had he.

What the council will actually be voting on is not one document but five or six, according to Council Chair Alan Clendenin, covering the finance agreement, a non-relocation agreement, community benefits and the development obligations. Clendenin has also said more votes will follow after Aug. 27 because of changes still being worked in.

Who is paying what

Source	Amount
Hillsborough County	About $796 million
City of Tampa	About $180 million
Rays	About $1.27 billion, plus cost overruns
Total ballpark	$2.3 billion

The city's share looks very different than it did three months ago. The May memorandum tapped $80 million from Tampa's portion of the Community Investment Tax and $100 million in tax-increment money from the Drew Park Community Redevelopment Area, dollars otherwise earmarked for reinvestment inside that neighborhood. Both are out. Under the framework Mayor Jane Castor and Carlson have described, the city would instead put in $80 million through a line of credit or an internal loan, with another $100 million coming from a loan taken out by the team. Both would be repaid largely out of property tax growth from the private development around the ballpark.

That rework is what appears to have unsettled the county side. Boles has pointed to the lack of guaranteed revenue and to missing assurances about the surrounding mixed-use development. Miller has taken aim at the size and structure of Tampa's contribution to a project where the county is putting up four dollars for every one from the city.

The site, and the clock

The 31,000-seat ballpark would rise on land now used by Hillsborough Community College's Dale Mabry campus, inside a roughly 121-acre district in Drew Park. The Rays have committed to spend at least $8 billion on the development around it, including a rebuilt college campus, housing, retail and a hotel. The state has pledged $150 million toward the college and donated land. The county would own the ballpark.

The team wants to be playing there by the 2029 season, and its construction schedule calls for site work to start next month. The Rays have already hired AECOM Hunt and Turner to manage construction.

What happens next

County Commission Chair Ken Hagan has said he will not schedule a commission vote until the city acts, with the county expected to take it up the morning after a council approval. The commission approved the May memorandum 5-2, meaning the deal can absorb only so many defections before it fails outright.

There is also unfinished business at the Community Redevelopment Agency board, which is the council wearing a different hat. Members scheduled a special CRA meeting for Aug. 27 as a placeholder, and Carlson has asked the CRA attorney to have documents ready for the board's Sept. 10 meeting to carry out the redevelopment promises written into the Rays contract. Those include extending the Drew Park and East Tampa CRAs by 30 years, to 2064, and shifting part of the downtown district's tax increment into a citywide infrastructure trust fund.

The Aug. 27 council meeting and the CRA special meeting are both public. Agendas and meeting details are posted at tampa.gov.

We will be following every step of this deal, including the county's vote. For more, visit Tampa Community Website, follow us on Facebook, and join the conversation in our Community Forum. You can read more government and politics stories and local news from around Tampa and Hillsborough County.

Header photo: DanTD / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)