While the fate of the Trop’s main tenant, the Tampa Bay Rays, remains uncertain, the city asked developers to envision the project with and without a baseball stadium. Unicorp’s plan would cost $643 million without a stadium, Whittall said, and well over $1 billion with one. The company has requested $100 million in tax incremental funding from the city to be spent on parks, the arts and other public uses. With or without a stadium, the company said development could wrap by 2029. That timeline will only be possible if the city can get cooperation from the Rays, whose future is inextricably tied to that of the development project.

 

The team’s lease of the stadium runs through the 2027 season, during which time the team is prohibited from playing home games anywhere else. In exchange for that exclusivity, the Rays are entitled to half the revenue generated by the property through the lease term, and they have a say over what construction can occur.

 

But the Rays want out of Tropicana Field, an outdated venue, early, and to fully and freely explore their novel idea of splitting their season between home stadiums in the Tampa Bay area and Montreal, and to do so prior to 2028. Kriseman has said he will not waive the exclusivity clause in the Trop lease. In response, the team has said it can hold up development in court.

 

Rays President Brian Auld on Friday issued a one-sentence statement on the proposals being due: We are curious to see how this process progresses.

 

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the parcel for St. Petersburg. City and community leaders speak of the Trop project in transformational terms: a flat, publicly owned, contiguous parcel that spans more than 21 square blocks on the edge of an active and growing downtown.

 

But in addition to the complications involving the Rays, whoever wins the bid to shepherd the project through will have to navigate other challenges. While the stadium’s vast blacktop parking lot will keep demolition and site clearing costs low, it also represents what some consider to be a grave injustice to the city’s Black community.

 

The Gas Plant District, a working class and predominantly Black neighborhood that surrounded a natural gas production facility, was razed in the 1980s to make way for what was first called the Florida Suncoast Dome. The city offered fair market value to property owners, displacing families, businesses churches and schools that had underpinned that neighborhood for decades. For those who refused to sell, the city claimed their land through eminent domain.

 

The justification always was that a new baseball stadium would attract a Major League ball club, and around it would sprout economic growth that would benefit the residents it displaced. Part of that dream materialized when, in 1998, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays debuted. But prosperity never came, and the new development bears the responsibility of delivering on that promise and honoring the Gas Plant’s history and sacrifice.

 

Quite frankly, the area around it, the neighbors felt like they got taken advantage of,  Whittall said. We thought the best way to give back to the community was to give something the entire community could use. That’s why we designed our entire proposal around the park and gathering spaces, and things we felt would benefit the community.

 

City officials have discussed creating a community benefit agreement, whereby tax revenue generated on the new Trop site development could be funneled into the city’s poorest community to fight poverty. The idea is similar to a community redevelopment area, except that instead of tax revenue being raised and reinvested in the same area, it would be raised in one area and invested in another.

 

The winning developer will have to contend with environmental concerns surrounding Booker Creek and address a potential forgotten cemetery on a corner of the site.

 

Envisioning the project is an exercise in balancing many competing interests. The solicitation for proposals, which the city released in July, stressed the inclusion of abundant affordable or workforce housing so that the site doesn’t become an enclave for the well off. Other priorities include large swaths of park and greenspace; university, research or medical space; a convention center; hotel rooms; dining and retail; a revived Booker Creek; exhibition, museum or art space; parking; and office space that could house the headquarters of a major company.

 

Friday’s deadline comes just as the campaign to replace Kriseman begins to heat up. Ken Welch, a former five term Pinellas County Commissioner, announcing his bid for mayor the same day. Earlier in the week, City Council member Darden Rice filed her paperwork to run.

 

The next mayor will be responsible for seeing Kriseman’s selection through, or he or she could seek to pivot the project entirely. Rice and Welch both said earlier in the week that they would keep an open mind about the submissions.

 

I’m hopeful that this process will yield good proposals. I think it will become quickly apparent if it will not, Rice said earlier in the week. But I’m not going to settle for anything less than this city deserves, which is the best.

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Contact Josh Solomon (St. Petersburg City Hall Reporter at jsolomon@tampabay.com or 813-909-4613. Follow @ByJoshSolomon

Contact Jay Cridlin Economic Development Reporter at cridlin@tampabay.com or 727-893-8336. Follow @JayCridlin.