Florida politicians have not yet delivered all the money needed for a Tampa Stadium-Village.
Tampa, Hillsborough County and Florida politicians listen up. The Tampa Bay Rays’ franchise’s CEO Ken Babby is getting somewhat impatient with you dragging your feet in allocating what will turn out to be more than a billion public dollars for his bosses planned Tampa stadium-village. This was supposed to have been done with shovels in the ground so that Rays’ baseball would be played in a new stadium on the Opening Day of the 2028 Major League Baseball season. That hasn’t happened and now Babby is casually issuing a warning. You better get this done in August so we can start the stadium project and have the planned Tampa stadium open in March or April of 2029. “We need decisions made in August,” Babby said. “If we’re not able to do that, we’re not going to be able to hit that April 2029 date, and that really risks not only the future of baseball in Tampa Bay, but the future of the Rays in our region.”
Babby said the Rays’ organization has not reached out to the areas where politicians claim they are ready to host a Major League Baseball franchise. Those markets include Salt Lake City, Utah, Vancouver British Columbia, Portland, Oregon, Orlando, Florida and Sacramento, California. Nashville, Tennessee would be on the list as well, but public money may not be available locally. “We’ve not run a competitive process up to this point with other cities,” Babby said. “We’ve not even engaged in conversations with countless other cities that have all been publicly reported that would love the opportunity to have the Rays in their city, and some that you know probably would offer even greater public funding should they be given an opportunity.” Babby claimed building a stadium and surrounding village would bring jobs and money. That doesn’t always work out for taxpayers.
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