Tampa Takes the Rays After a 5-2 County Vote

Hillsborough County voted 5-2 last Friday to put $796 million into a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark. A day earlier, Tampa City Council had squeezed the same package through 4-3. Those two tallies pull the club out of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg and plant a fixed-roof park on Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, across the street from Raymond James Stadium, aimed at Opening Day 2029.

Managing partner Patrick Zalupski, who took control last fall, put the winner’s line in a statement: “Forever starts now.” Pinellas County still has the team through 2028. After that, the Rays play in Tampa.

Two Votes Moved the Rays Across the Bay

The city vote on Aug. 27 was the tighter one. Council members Charlie Miranda, Guido Maniscalco, and Lynn Hurtak voted no. Bill Carlson had said in May, when the nonbinding memo passed, that he would vote no on the final papers. On Thursday he flipped, and 4-3 held.

Carlson pointed to changes between the spring memo and the August contracts, including a smaller city check and a hard cap on Tampa’s risk. Council Chair Alan Clendenin, who voted yes, spent the night drawing that line in public.

We’re not writing the check or the Rays a blank check. We’re not agreeing to cover cost overruns. We’re not assuming responsibility for construction defects.

Alan Clendenin, Tampa City Council chair, during the Aug. 27 debate

Friday morning belonged to Hillsborough. Commission Chair Ken Hagan, on the board since 2002 and the loudest local backer of a Tampa ballpark for years, voted yes with Harry Cohen, Gwen Myers, Christine Miller, and Chris Boles. Joshua Wostal and Donna Cameron Cepeda voted no. Wostal called the deal an albatross. After the gavel, Hagan looked up and said, “Dad, we did it.”

HOW THE VOTES BROKE

Cohen, a yes vote, framed the choice as whether Hillsborough wants to sit with cities that host three major league clubs. Commissioner Rob Manfred called it “a great day for Tampa Bay Rays fans, the entire Tampa Bay region and Major League Baseball.” Mayor Jane Castor had already blessed the papers as a step forward for Tampa. The political map of the region is now set: Hillsborough writes the large public share, Tampa writes a capped one, and St. Petersburg keeps an aging dome for two more seasons.

St. Petersburg Is Left Holding Tropicana Field

St. Petersburg built a dome before it had a team. The Florida Suncoast Dome opened in 1990 at a cost of $138 million, on land cleared in the Gas Plant District, a historically Black neighborhood. The White Sox almost came in 1988. Vince Naimoli almost moved the Giants there in 1992 for $115 million until National League owners blocked the sale. An expansion club finally arrived, and the Devil Rays took the field in 1998 in the building later named Tropicana Field.

The club spent two decades trying to leave that building without leaving the market. A sail-roof park at Al Lang Field died. A $900 million Ybor City plan collapsed in 2018 on financing. A Tampa-Montreal split-season idea died when MLB rejected it. Then came a $1.3 billion ballpark tied to a $6.5 billion Historic Gas Plant redevelopment, with St. Petersburg putting up $287.5 million and Pinellas County $312.5 million, $600 million of public money on that side of the bay.

Hurricane Milton tore the Trop’s roof in October 2024. On March 13, 2025, then-principal owner Stuart Sternberg said the club “cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment,” after those governments had already said yes. MLB pushed him to sell. Zalupski’s group closed last September. Sternberg said he sold to the group that “gave it the best opportunity to keep this team in Tampa Bay.” The opportunity he meant was Tampa, not another St. Pete dome.

THE PATH OUT OF THE TROP

1. 1990: The Florida Suncoast Dome opens in St. Petersburg without a baseball tenant.
2. 1998: The Devil Rays begin play at the renamed Tropicana Field.
3. 2018: A $900 million Ybor City stadium plan collapses over financing.
4. October 2024: Hurricane Milton tears the roof off Tropicana Field.
5. March 13, 2025: Sternberg walks away from the approved Gas Plant ballpark deal.
6. 2025 season: The Rays play at 10,046-seat George M. Steinbrenner Field and sell out 61 home dates.
7. September 2025: Zalupski’s group takes control and makes a Tampa “forever home” the first job.
8. Aug. 27-28, 2026: Tampa and Hillsborough approve the Dale Mabry campus deal.

The use agreement at Tropicana Field expires after the 2028 season. St. Petersburg still hosts baseball until then. It does not host what comes after. The building that was supposed to make the city major league is now a two-year problem with a known end date.

Who Pays for the $2.36 Billion Ballpark?

The 134-page development and funding agreement delivered Aug. 21 names the city, the county, and StadCo, a subsidiary of Florida Baseball Partners LLC, as parties. The projected cost is $2.36 billion. Public money is capped at $876 million. The club’s share is about $1.37 billion, and StadCo eats every cost overrun.

That public number is $100 million below the $976 million city-county framework floated in May. The extra $100 million shifted onto the club is how Carlson and other wavering yes votes described the final papers. County cash still dwarfs the city’s.

THE MONEY STACK

The county stack is specific. Four Community Investment Tax payments of $90 million through 2029 total $360 million. Tourist Development Tax money is $228 million in bonds, a $40 million reserve payment, and $35 million in bonds planned for 2031, $303 million in all. A one-time county fund payment is $103 million. Federal Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery money of $30 million is earmarked for stormwater work. Those four lines add to $796 million.

Hillsborough County will own the park. The Rays pay $4 million a year in rent under a 35-year non-relocation use agreement. Documents set a minimum of 28,000 seats under a fixed roof. Populous is finishing schematic design. AECOM Hunt and Turner Construction are the builders. The surrounding mixed-use district, which the club has described as an $8 billion to $10 billion private job, sits outside the $2.36 billion ballpark budget.

The public-money fight does not end because the gavel fell. Hillsborough is using a half-cent sales tax built for roads and public buildings, plus hotel-side tourist taxes, to underwrite a club owned by a developer. Decades of studies on stadium subsidies find little evidence that new parks raise local income or job counts in a way that covers the public outlay. That research will not unwind Friday’s 5-2. It is the ground the no votes were standing on.

A Temporary Campus Called the Nest

The site is not a vacant lot. It is Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, a roughly 115-acre parcel at 4001 West Tampa Bay Boulevard in Westshore. The ballpark takes 21.5 acres. The college keeps a rebuilt campus district on the southwest corner. In January the trustees voted unanimously to start talks. College president Ken Atwater, in the job since 2010, called the plan a generational opening and said he had his fingers crossed heading into last week’s votes.

Students are supposed to stay put. The club and the college will put up a temporary on-site campus, The Nest, so classes do not move to Brandon, Ybor, or Plant City while the old buildings come down. Atwater wants that temporary campus ready for the spring term, about four months from last week. CEO Ken Babby said work on The Nest would start at once, and that students will not be sent off-site.

WHAT THE CAMPUS PAPERS SET IN MOTION

• The Nest: A temporary on-site campus so Dale Mabry students keep going to class during construction.
• College cash: Trustees were told the ground lease with no college cash cost holds if the public funding contingencies hit.
• State ask: Interim CFO Ken Burdzinski put the campus rebuild at about $215 million and said the college is asking Tallahassee for another $165 million.
• Permits: The agreement makes the college, not Tampa’s building department, the sole permitting authority for the project.
• Title path: The college leases land to StadCo until the county takes title through a separate conveyance.

Trustees also set aside $500,000 for relocation planning and hired Tampa’s Pure Project Management as owner’s representative, $30,000 to start and $1.95 million to $2.4 million if the rebuild proceeds. Gov. Ron DeSantis had already backed the site. The college’s bet is that a ballpark next door buys new classrooms, internships, and a rebuilt Dale Mabry that the state helps fund. If Tallahassee shorted that ask, the club would still have a park site and the school would have a construction zone.

The Club Eats Every Cost Overrun

Tampa’s $80 million is a ceiling, paid in four $20 million installments, and it is not a construction float for the Rays. County money is also capped at $796 million. StadCo has to finish design, construction, and financing. The papers give the club 36 months after the local votes to lock funding, or the deal dies on its own. All contracts, budget, and financing must be in place within 48 months, or the agreement ends there too.

A community benefits agreement still has to be finished before city or county dollars can be spent, covering items the club has listed as housing, workforce, and youth programs. Bond validation has to clear. Major demolition waits on that sequence. Babby said Populous is nearly done with schematic design, which the city and county have not yet been shown in final form. Site work was slated to start in September in the August papers, with substantial completion targeted for March 31, 2029.

The club posted its own summary of those papers on Aug. 21, before either vote.

A statement from the Tampa Bay Rays on definitive documents for the proposed Forever Home ballpark and mixed-use district.

For the Definitive Document Summary, visit: https://t.co/RoBuHm2LPk pic.twitter.com/wgmqt1kB55

— Tampa Bay Rays (@RaysBaseball) August 21, 2026

Zalupski is named in an exhibit as the HoldCo principal expected to fund part of StadCo’s equity. A companion paper commits Florida Baseball Partners to cover StadCo if the subsidiary cannot. Another requires the team to play its home games in the new building. Those are the private-side rails that Clendenin was pointing at when he said Tampa is not on the hook for a blown budget or a bad pour.

Hagan has compared the private district to Water Street Tampa and Midtown Tampa combined. The Forever Home ballpark and district plans sell a live-work-learn-play copy of the Atlanta Braves’ Battery, with office space, retail, a hotel, and the rebuilt campus wrapped around the park. That district is the club’s to finance. The public stack pays toward the ballpark and related infrastructure, not toward Zalupski’s neighborhood.

Will Tampa Fill Seats the Trop Could Not?

The remaining argument is not whether St. Petersburg lost. It did. The argument is whether a Westshore address was the missing piece, or whether Tampa Bay’s attendance problem travels with the club. Tropicana Field sat on the wrong side of the bay for a lot of the region’s weekday drivers. Dale Mabry sits next to the Yankees’ spring home and across the highway from the Buccaneers, nearer Tampa International Airport and the denser part of the market.

A season in Tampa already offered a small sample. After Milton, the 2025 Rays played at Steinbrenner Field.

THE 2025 TAMPA SAMPLE

• 10,046 seats: Steinbrenner Field’s capacity for the hurricane-displaced home schedule.
• 61 sellouts: Every home date, starting with a 7-0 opening win over Pittsburgh.
• 28,000 seats: The minimum in the new park’s definitive documents, nearly triple that spring-training bowl.

Selling out a 10,046-seat Yankees spring park is not the same job as filling 28,000 on a April weeknight. The Lightning’s run of arena sellouts is the local comparison people reach for, and it is a different sport with a different building. If the new park is loud and full, Hagan and Zalupski get to say the Trop’s place on the map was the leak. If it is quiet, Hillsborough will have spent $796 million to learn that the empty seats were never only a St. Petersburg problem.

Babby spent Friday afternoon at Tropicana Field. He said staff had been waiting on the two yes votes, and that he had spent the day hitting go on decisions the club can now talk about in the coming weeks. “It’s all systems go for the Tampa Bay Rays in Tampa,” he said, in the building they will leave when the 2028 schedule ends.