{"id":645201,"date":"2026-08-18T19:42:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/645201\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:42:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:42:29","slug":"rays-officials-choose-familiar-firm-for-stadium-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/645201\/","title":{"rendered":"Rays officials choose familiar firm for stadium project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The Tampa Bay Rays just picked a new teammate.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, the team announced the construction firm it wants to build a new stadium in Tampa at the Hillsborough College site.<\/p>\n<p>A selection committee of Rays executives picked\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/aecom.com\/aecom-hunt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AECOM Hunt Turner<\/a> as contractors for the proposed construction project. The committee included Rays co-president Matt Silverman and Hillsborough College President Ken Atwater, along with team consultants.<\/p>\n<p>Four firms were bidding for the job.<\/p>\n<p>AECOM Hunt Turner has a history with the area, doing repairs on Tropicana Field after Hurricane Milton.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re taking this next step despite not having deals finalized with the city of Tampa or Hillsborough County. Team officials said they took this step now to be ready to start construction quickly once funding is in place.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, financial negotiations on the massive $2.3-billion development between the team, city and county are ongoing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/specne.ws\/TpaHsG\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Rays have committed to spending $1.2 billion on the project and were previously seeking $976 million in public contributions to the project<\/a>, with $796 million from the county and $180 million from the city.<\/p>\n<p>The team is now working to get a permit to build at Hillsborough College. That request is set for a Hillsborough Planning Commission hearing in November.<\/p>\n<p>The Rays are hoping to have the stadium open by the 2029 season.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Rays_HC_rendering_0205_3-1-2-1.jpeg\" alt=\"\" class=\"hashed-image\" img-data-alignment=\"center\" img-data-width=\"percent-hundred\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Rendering provided by the Rays of a new ballpark, revamped Hillsborough College and surrounding entertainment district. (Courtesy of Tampa Bay Rays)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 The Tampa Bay Rays just picked a new teammate. On Monday, the team announced&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5105],"tags":[2100,4087,15479,5,16721,16724,189,16722,40,4,16720,187,540,92,5168,5167,1953,27385,5467],"class_list":["post-645201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-hockey","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-josh-rojas","tag-lightning","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-nhl","tag-rays-stadium","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabaylightning","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/117118222244833104","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}