The Tampa Bay Rays are NOT moving and this is how I know!

The Tampa Bay Rays are NOT moving and this is how I know!

because the Rays have new owners and Ken Babby is the new CEO of the Rays. And yesterday, Ken Babby is at the winter meetings. I went to the winter meetings, too. So, as team president, it’s it’s common. It’s normal. You’re in the room. You want to be a part of it. What’s happening? You want to you the owners, some owners come to the winter meetings, but not many. What question do you think is being asked of the Tampa Rays? They’re not asking them about signing Steven Matz for two years, $15 million. They’re not asking them, “Will the trop be ready for opening day?” No one cares. What they’re asking the new ownership in Tampa is, “What’s with the new stadium? Where are we? What do we got?” Well, the answer is that he came out publicly and said that they are narrowing down the sites having spoken to stakeholders in Tampa because they’re only looking in Tampa. They’re not looking in St. Petersburg. They’ve completely realized and decided they are leaving St. Petersburg. Thank you so much for redoing the TROP. Thank you for spending all the millions of dollars you spent for the new roof. We’re so thrilled to be out of the Yankee spring training facility, but we are not building a stadium in St. Petersburg. Good luck with your development around the Trop going forward. It’s going to be great. But what Babby said is, “Yeah, we’re looking at a whole bunch of sites normal.” But then he said something totally insane that they believe they are on track to open a ballpark in 2029. And I started thinking to myself, hold on, 2029, that’s April of 2029. It’s got to be ready for March of 2029. Right now, we’re about to be in January of 2026. That means it’s 36 + 2 is 38 months. And they’re going to have a roof guaranteed. And let’s pretend that you can build a stadium in 32 months, which you can’t, but just pretend you can. Unless you’re in Vegas, in which case everything is going swimmingly and it’s all going to be done on time, on budget, no problem. Because Vegas is teeming with tourists and ready to roll, drawing 8 to 10,000 people a day from out of town to all 81 games. It’s a perfect financial plan. And Tampa’s got the same situation. Don’t worry about hurricane season. Don’t worry about any of it. We’re good. They don’t have a site. They don’t have a financing plan. If that they’re talking, Babby said, “You got to be careful when you’re a new president or CEO because words have meaning.” And he drops a we’ve been talking to architects. We’ve been talking to contractors. We’ve been talking to stakeholders. We’ve been talking to the public, to the council members. Do you know how many months and months and months of talking it takes before you even get to construction documents, before you get to a finance plan, before you get to actually start building rebar in the ground and pouring concrete? And then once you’re pouring concrete, that means you’re good to go. No more delays. Nope. Doesn’t mean that Vegas. Now, there may not be delays. Vegas may be open. They’re 10 to 15% done in Vegas. They may be open in 28. They may be. They got 26 months. plenty of time. The reason why Tampa needs a site is they need to figure out which body of public entity, which entity is going to be financing this project, who’s going to be their partner. If they were privately building this stadium, all they’d have to do is buy land and they could start right now. But when the public’s involved and there’s multiple counties involved in cities and trying to figure out what percentage of what who’s going to pay, this is exactly what we went through in Florida as we looked in Broward, we looked in Palm Beach, we looked at Miami, we looked everywhere to figure out where to build and ended up in the city of Miami so the county of Miami Dade and the city of Miami could contribute to say nothing of trying to go to Tallahassee to get the state to contribute. You’re trying to put a finance deal together and it is not easy. So, what do you do? You make the mistake that new owners make and then all of a sudden you’re walking it back. How many times have we seen owners say, “Oh, yeah. No, not available for 29. We’re making it 30. Not available for 2022. It’s going to be 2023.” Raise your hand. I did it. I thought we’d have a building ready for 2006. And then it was 2008. Then it was 9. Then it was 11. Then it was 12. and then it opened in 2012. So, don’t panic. The real takeaway from the winter meetings and from the Tampa Bay Rays is that you’ve got a middle of the rotation guy for $7.5 million. Way to go. No, that’s not the real takeaway. The real takeaway is that your team is staying. That you are going to get a ballpark done in Tampa. The real takeaway is that you’ve got, wait for it, the number two pick in the draft. Yeah.

#tampa #baseball #MLB

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