He cited an email from Deputy County Administrator Gregory Horwedel, and added that a vote by Tampa City Council could quickly follow a county vote.<\/p>\n
The proposal to relocate the Rays from St. Pete to Tampa has drawn significant support from elected officials at the local and state levels, but negotiations for public funding could be more heated. If approved, the funds would be used to build out a new ballpark for the team equipped with a state-of-the-art rooftop, as well as a surrounding mixed-use district in the mold of the Atlanta Braves ballpark and the surrounding Battery District.<\/p>\n
Hillsborough County officials have already indicated the project would likely require use of voter-approved Community Investment Tax<\/a> dollars, a proposal that some Commissioners have already vocally opposed because the measure was approved without a Rays facility in mind. <\/p>\n Commissioners are expected to review the Rays\u2019 proposal as part of discussions about whether Hillsborough County should formally participate in the deal, but a full funding agreement would likely require approvals from multiple governing bodies. <\/p>\n The city of Tampa and the state are also considering financial commitments to the Tampa Bay Rays project \u2014 although unresolved state budget discussions<\/a> are largely focused on supporting Hillsborough College redevelopment<\/a> as a part of the District rather than direct contribution to Rays\u2019 facility itself.<\/p>\n Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> and members of the Cabinet, sitting as the Board of Trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund, have already voted to convey about 22 acres of state owned land<\/a> to Hillsborough College for the project.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials have already indicated the project would likely require use of voter-approved Community Investment Tax dollars. The ball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[81166,5,73101,35960,19859,4,297,16597,5796,295,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-632528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-1-billion","tag-baseball","tag-community-investment-tax","tag-hillsborough-college","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-ron-desantis","tag-st-petersburg","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116258329478284799","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/UBER_ACCESS_OLDERADULTS_728X90_102225.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n