We finally have a price tag on how much Tampa Bay Rays owner Patrick Zalupski wants in spending by Hillsborough County to help build a $2.3 billion stadium in Tampa:
A notice for the meeting says the Rays would pay at least half the cost of a stadium. The rest could come from tourist bed taxes or increases in property taxes collected from the surrounding area after a stadium is built.
So if Zalupski is asking for the county to cover half the cost of building a $2.3 billion stadium, that’s $1.15 billion. (Whether county hotel tax receipts plus increased property tax proceeds would be enough to raise $1.15 billion is a question no one appears to have asked yet, though I suppose they could always just make the stadium tax district the size of the entire county, as one does. WUSF also suggests several other funding options that could be on the table, including a Community Development District and hotel and car rental tax surcharges.) The cost of providing state-owned land has previously been estimated to be at minimum $250 million, plus the Rays would duck out of $839 million worth of future property taxes and parcel fees over the course of their 99-year lease. Add it all up, and you’re at something like $2.25 billion in taxpayer subsidies that Zalupski is requesting, which would be by far the biggest public spend on a stadium deal in MLB history.
Or, if you’re the Tampa Bay Times, you go with this glass-half-full headline:
Rays tell Hillsborough they’ll cover at least 50% of Tampa stadium cost
Focusing on the fact that the billionaire who just bought the local sports team plans to cover half the cost of a stadium that he’ll receive all the revenues from, instead of the fact that he’s asking the public to cover the other half, is certainly a choice. (As is describing the team as having “honed in on” Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, which is not the actual phrase, but that’s a separate issue.)
The meeting referenced above is tomorrow’s Hillsborough County commission meeting, which kicks off at 9 a.m. — the official agenda doesn’t actually mention anything about a Rays stadium, though it does helpfully include a link to a giant image of an American flag. With any luck, we’ll get some questions then about why the county should gift Zalupski more than $2 billion just so the baseball team he bought for $1.7 billion can increase in value; maybe we can even hope to get some answers, but we probably shouldn’t push our luck.