Tampa Bay Rays Making Their Last Stand With New Ballpark Plan

It sounds like the last tango in Tampa Bay for Major League Baseball’s Rays. New ownership is tackling a new ballpark site in the area that sounds much more complicated than the previous two failed locations in Ybor City and St. Petersburg.

Lurking is a group in nearby Orlando called the Orlando Dreamers, which said last year they earmarked a 35.5 acre site adjacent to Seaworld and the Orange County Convention Center, plus $1 billion to build a new baseball facility.

Last week, the Rays identified a 100-acre site on the Tampa side of the bay at Hillsborough Community College smack in the middle of their stadium district next to Steinbrenner Field and Raymond James Stadium. The school’s Board of Trustees approved the plan with a memorandum of understanding on January 20.

The trouble is, they have only a non-binding agreement to work out a deal with thus far no plans nor money.

“There’s still great work ahead of us to be able to bring this to reality,” Rays chief executive Ken Babby said during a press conference. “But what I can say is that we believe with conviction that we’re going to be able to create a world-class, work-live-learn-play development here in Tampa Bay, and we’re very, very encouraged and pleased by today’s outcome.”

Rays Approved to Seek Stadium Complex at School Site

The Rays want an Atlanta-style ballpark district like Truist Park and the Battery, but there was a lot of friendly compliance between the Braves and Cobb County to get that done and move the ballclub from Turner Field south of downtown Atlanta. Big money was involved from both sides to build what turned out to be a $1 billion mixed-use project in 2017 with the county contributing about $400 million of taxpayer money.

A decade later, the price tag will be more like $2 billion to move the Rays across the bay from Tropicana Field to a stadium with a retractable roof in the midst of their own mixed-use project the new owners have identified as their only way to survive. But there are a lot of moving parts: the college, Hillsborough County and the state of Florida.

The Rays should look at what happened to the A’s at Oakland’s Laney College in 2017 for how quickly a well-intentioned project can go sideways and evaporate forever into thin air.

In January, Babby said on a local podcast that the Rays were one of the most distressed franchises in team sports, although his group led by Jacksonville developer Patrick Zalupski still bought it from Stu Sternberg last year for $1.75 billion.

“In North America, at least in my eyes, there’s not a professional sports team that is in more crisis and has more headwinds than the Tampa Bay Rays,” Babby said.

Rays And A’s Suffering from Ballpark Problems

The Athletics are right up there as a franchise-in-crisis with at least two seasons to go in West Sacramento’s minor league Sutter Health Park before a new ballpark is ready to open in Las Vegas, their ultimate final destination.

The Rays had a chaotic season for the ages in 2025. Hurricane Milton destroyed the Trop, and they had to play their home games at 10,000-seat Steinbrenner Field, the converted spring home of the New York Yankees. As a result of the hurricane, Sternberg pulled out of a long developed stadium and ballpark district plan next to the Trop, precipitating his sale of the team. In 2018, he scuttled a similar ballpark deal in Ybor City near downtown Tampa.

The Trop has since been rebuilt, the Teflon slats that constitute the roof replaced, and by terms of their lease, the entire interior of the vintage 1990 stadium is being refurbished by St. Petersburg because of flood damage. It’s expected to be ready for the home opener against the Chicago Cubs on April 6. The Rays are scheduled to play there for three more seasons through at least 2028.

The good news is that they have a freshly minted Tropicana Field to play in and three seasons to complete their new ballpark search. If they need more time, the Rays could simply extend the lease.

“We don’t have time to waste,” Babby added. “We intend to open a new ballpark by April of 2029. Our current ballpark [was completely] destroyed by a hurricane. We have no forever future ballpark.”

If time is of the essence, wouldn’t it have been more expedient to revive the project next to the Trop? Pinellas County and St. Pete already had serious money on the table. But new ownership seems intent to move the team to Tampa.

A’s Dropped the Ball Before Moving to West Sacramento

The A’s intended to have a new ballpark ready in Oakland or its vicinity for 20 years, but it never happened. Laney College was one of the failed stops along the way as well as Fremont, San Jose and finally the Howard Terminal.

The A’s wanted to build a 35,000-seat ballpark on a parking lot adjacent to Laney College owned by the Peralta Community School District. They earmarked several sites, including the Coliseum and Howard Terminal, but settled on Laney because of its proximity to downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt. “Location, location, location” is the old real estate axiom.

The A’s ran their plan by Laney College chancellor Jowel Laguerre, who gave them the green light to explore it. The resulting negative publicity created a huge backlash from the students and the community, who were ardently against the concept. Three months later, the school’s own Board of Trustees ordered Laguerre to end talks.

In Tampa, it was the school’s trustees that approved the exploration during a meeting that offered no discussion. In this case, the entire college campus is going to have to be rebuilt and relocated to make way for the ballpark and the district. What could go wrong? One assumes in the months ahead there will be plenty of time for very public discussion and all sides to weigh in. And they will weigh in.

The Rays’ plan has raised healthy skepticism from the local media, and well it should. The ballclub, albeit under different ownership, has gone down this road a few times before. Orlando beckons.

As Tampa Bay Times sports columnist John Romano wrote on Jan. 24: “Best of luck to the Rays on the stadium idea. They’re going to need it.”