Tampa Bay Rays stadium committee looking at three Tampa sites
June 26, 2009 at 8:24 am by Wayne Garcia
The now-rejected watefront ballpark; will St. Pete-Pinellas also be rejected?
And the other shoe drops. It was predictable after the outburst earlier this week from Tampa Bay Rays President Matt Silverman about poor attendance at the Phillies series that it was just setting the table for a St. Petersburg departure. Now, comes confirmation that it is very actively being considered.
The A Baseball Community, studying everything from new sites for a Rays stadium to how to boost ticket sales, now confirms that three of the five geographic areas it is analyzing are in Hillsborough County. The three are in Westshore, downtown Tampa and east of the city at/near the Florida State Fairgrounds. Those sites join mid-Pinellas County (the Feather Sound/Carillon area) and downtown St. Petersburg on the list of five regions under study.
The St. Petersburg Times reported:
Progress Energy Florida CEO Jeff Lyash, chairman of A Baseball Community, said Thursday that the city-commissioned group is examining potential sites in those five “trade areas” and anticipates detailed reports on each region by August.
The analysis would consider income levels in surrounding neighborhoods, population within a 30- to 45-minute drive and availability of land.
“We’re not looking at any particular site,” insisted Lyash.
This is quite a change from December 2008, when the Rays released a report detailing their Top 7 relocation destinations, many in St. Petersburg and all in Pinellas County. Last week, they ruled out a rehab of Tropicana Field.
Now watch the ensuing political shitstorm. The fight between St. Pete (which, by the way, has a long-term lease for the team to stay in the Trop) and Tampa has been one of the most childish of the long history of sibling feuds between both sides of the Bay. When St. Petersburg was trying to lure a team to its empty domed stadium, for instance, the editor of the Tampa Tribune’s editorial page bemoaned how nobody would drive to games, the setting sun blinding their eyes on the Howard Frankland Bridge, to visit an area of The ‘Burg that resembled “a particularly pinched Albanian village.”
Yeah, that went over well.
