Sternberg: Stadium in 2012 or bust

Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg was on New York sports talk radio this afternoon talking about the early success of the team, and the stadium came up. Listen to the interview here . (It's worth it).

If you don't feel like clicking, here's the gist of what Sternberg had to say, Courtesy of Rays Index:

• Sternberg made it clear that the stadium would either be open by 2012 or it will not happen. If the referendum does not pass this fall, there will not be another attempt to get it passed.

Comments

[Jon McPhee]

Tell me again why the community is supposed to pony up for these folks? It is simply not "because they can't afford it any other way." Any of you think our Mayor and City Council and staff, and county government, are out of their league in trying to dance with these stars?

How quickly we forget. Here's a piece from the Times, way back on November 25, 2007, shortly before the Rays put out their first tentative preliminary skeletal interim plan for fleecing the sheep of the Pinellas Peninsula. Read it carefully, folks -- it's deja vu all over again.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/25/Southpinellas/Rays_owners_dealing_w.shtml

In pertinent part, it reads--

"ST. PETERSBURG -- Convincing elected officials to foot two-thirds of the $450-million bill for a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium may be a tough sell.
But the 23 individuals who own the baseball team should have no trouble scraping up the remaining $150-million.

That's particularly true for the six-man partnership, led by New York's 48-year-old Stuart L. Sternberg, that spent $65-million to buy a controlling stake of the Rays in 2004.

The Sternberg Six - which includes Andrew Cader, Randy W. Frankel, Timothy R. Mullen, Gary F. Goldring, Stephen M. Levick and Sternberg - are essentially low-profile financial experts who were at the right place at the right time. They all had been top executives at a New York securities firm called Spear Leeds & Kellogg in 2000 when Wall Street banking and investment giant Goldman Sachs acquired it for $6.5-billion.
Sternberg alone took home, conservatively, tens of millions of dollars.

Since then, the men, all roughly 50 years old, have lived like corporate nobility, spending their free time investing, pushing pet causes and acquiring lavish lifestyles and homes far from the Tampa Bay area.

None of the Sternberg Six agreed to be interviewed for this story, deferring instead to a press conference scheduled for Wednesday at Al Lang Field that team officials say will provide details of the new park and the redevelopment of Tropicana Field.

Sternberg's group could probably foot the entire $450-million bill themselves rather than dip into the public kitty for a big chunk of it. Not that they would. But a cursory look at their assets shows just how deep their pockets are. For example:

- Andrew Cader, a 49-year-old New Yorker who owns a $7.4-million vacation home in Aspen, Colo., will mark his 50th birthday there next year with a four-day bash. His house in Bedford, N.Y. - whose upscale lifestyle attracts the likes of Martha Stewart - is valued at $7.2-million.

- Randy W. Frankel, 50, owns a $7.6-million house along the New Jersey coast and a 3.5-acre estate in Montville, N.J. Sternberg's Harrison, N.Y., home is valued at $6-million.

- Timothy R. Mullen, a 51-year-old Chicagoan, donated $100,000 to the reelection campaign of Democratic Mayor Richard Daley last year. That put him into an exclusive club of corporate kingpins that included billionaire real estate investor Sam Zell and the executive chairman of insurer Aon Corp.

Meanwhile, the Sternberg Six remain active investors, and not just in the Rays. Partnerships led by Frankel have purchased a 730-acre ski resort in the Catskill Mountains for $25-million as well as the centuries-old Montville Inn in New Jersey. Mullen served on the board of online brokerage Thinkorswim Inc. of Chicago until February, when Utah-based Investools Inc. acquired it for $340-million.

Money isn't all that the Sternberg Six bring to the stadium deal. Goldring has an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business and a law degree from Columbia University. Cader, the former co-CEO of Spear Leeds, worked closely with former Goldman Sachs chairman and current U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and has testified before Congress. Frankel is a former CPA.

Collectively, their clout and experience putting together complex deals, sometimes under fire, should serve them well in the stadium negotiations.

As Wall Streeters who appreciate the power of leveraging their investments, it's unlikely the Rays owners would spend much of their own money to pay the full $150-million, anyway.
Sal Galatioto, president of a New York investment bank that specializes in sports deals, said teams often borrow money to help pay their share of a stadium's cost. Some are able to pledge future cash flows from sources such as naming rights or sky boxes.
"There are a whole bunch of ways to structure a stadium deal," he said. The Rays will provide additional information about the proposed deal when they officially unveil it Wednesday [that was supposed to be November 28].

Besides, the Sternberg Six are not the Rays' only deep pockets. Joseph Chlapaty, one of 17 limited partners who held on after the team's general partners were bought out, recently donated $22-million to the University of Dubuque for a recreation facility being built in his name...."

Tell me again why the public is being asked to foot the bill on this? Once again, the Giants' AT&T Stadium was built in a rough area of the working waterfront (old docks and factories) BY A CONSORTIUM OF BUSINESS PEOPLE WITH A LOT OF MONEY THAT SAW SOME VALUE IN MAKING A NEW PLACE FOR THE GIANTS TO PLAY, to the tune of a reported $316 million. That's in 1997-2000 go-go San Francisco, which was economically in the peak of health, and a whole lot richer than this area. The "local contribution" was money for light-rail and surface public transit improvements.

The Rays Boys can buy and sell anyone and anything in this area, except maybe the common sense of the majority of the people who live here. If these dudes want a stadium, let 'em pay off what they owe on the Trop, build their Sailfish at some reasonable site that THEY buy, and see what happens. None of what they propose requires huge expenditures of public money and huge new loads of debt and risk.

[Don Mott]

Right on Jon. Collectively they have the wherewithal to buy property and build their own stadium. but then they would have to write checks and pay property taxes. Oh my! Why should they do that when the government will give it to them on a silver platter. It is time millionaires start paying their own way and stop reaping profits off the back of taxpayers! Baseball ownership is a quite profitable business. If you cannot net enough profits to pay for your for profit business then shut it down and move on.

[Don in St. Pete]

Jon, You nailed this one. No Rays on the Bay. Michael Kalt andSilverman would have us believe the cash will just come rolling into City Hall despite the state of our economy and the numerous for rent signs appearing on commercial and retail property throughout the area. Not on our waterfront ever!

[Chris Jenkins]

And we all know how well Corporate welfare gives back to the people...look at all the jobs Nielson provides! Oh wait...um, I mean, look at all the jobs Scripps provides! Oh wait...um, I mean... (repeat ad nauseum, ad infinitum).

[The Great Karmack]

The Great Karmack sees the future. The NY city slickers will put on their smoke & mirrors show, and convince our beloved city council to allow a referendum on this year's ballot, which will be defeated by the residents by a 40+ point margin. And it will take nearly a year to remove & recycle all those red "no new stadium" signs.

And after next year's citywide elections, the council members who supported this boondoggle will be either selling shoes at Peltz or proud new owner/operators of hot dog stands on Central Ave.

And the Rays will remain in the attendence cellar of MLB, averaging less than 18,000 fans a game, regardless of standings, until they buy out their lease and move the team to Orlando in 2010.

The Great Karmack has spoken.

[Paul]

Oh Great Karmack, please recast your vision of our Councils' future. Please please don't muck up our streets and degrade the honorable profession of selling hot dogs by having Council members selling hot dogs in your view of the future. No one would ever buy a hot dog again if they were selling them. Long live the hot dog carts. No Council members allowed. haha

[Thomas]

If we don't build this stadium the Rays are leaving! Don't you get it! We MUST do this!!!

Just kidding.

Not feeling very inspired after the delay of disclosing the financing plan - so I just went low brow.

[Rand Moorhead]

The Rays are ten years behind in terms of new stadium construction and their plan is not in keeping with the trends in major league baseball. New stadiums have other attractions at the park in order to appeal to non-baseball fans who will accompany the diehards to the stadium. Comerica Park, in Detroit, has a food court, a carousel for the kids, and a beer garden in center field where many people don't even watch the game...at all. The waterfront site cannot accomodate attractions like these, yet the Trop can. Part of the land at the Trop could be sold off to developers...yes, some people love to live near a stadium (Chicago even has a neighborhood called "Wrigleyville")
The proceeds could be used to build a parking deck and to fund other attractions at the site. The Trop should be used for more concerts in the off-season, especially during the winter tourist season. This whole idea of using public money for a stadium shouldn't even be brought up.
St. Pete, Pinellas County, and the Tampa metro area need mass transit...
beyond buses...period. The place to start is to install a water taxi across the bay, connecting to the streetcar at Channelside and, on the other side, to a streetcar up Central in St. Pete....with a stop one block from the Trop. People from Tampa could go to a game WITHOUT the expense and the hassle of a car. Build a waterfront concert venue if there is a desire to use the Al Lang space. Tourists, our mainstay of the economy, will patronize a concert venue more than a stadium there. Rand Moorhead
St. Petersburg

[LaMichael Mitchell]

I do agree with what The Great Karmack on his comments, instead of moving to Orlando, how about the Rays moving to a city that is dying to see Major League Baseball and that city is none other than Charlotte, North Carolina!

[TruthDetector]

I get the impression from these blogs that Jon McPhee would rather discuss anything other than the merits of the Rays' proposal.