Scott Wagman on Rays ballpark: Not necessarily in St. Pete

ST. PETERSBURG -- Mayoral hopeful Scott Wagman said he wouldn't require the Tampa Bay Rays to build their new stadium within city limits.

Wagman said he would like the Rays to stay in St. Petersburg, but it is more important that team officials and community leaders come up with a location that will benefit the entire region and ensure the team has a long future in the Tampa Bay area.

However, Wagman said he would oppose plans to build a new stadium along St. Petersburg's historic waterfront.

Wagman's position on the Rays' controversial stadium stands in stark opposition to Mayor Rick Baker's demand that the stadium be built in St. Petersburg.

Wagman clarified his position on the Rays' stadium during a campaign event at the Globe Coffee Lounge Friday.

During an informal question and answer discussion with supporters, Wagman said crime and job creation were his two top issues.

He also said that time-limited parking downtown should be more consistent.

UPDATE (1:40 p.m.): Fellow mayoral contender Deveron Gibbons just called Wagman's position on possibly letting the Rays leave St. Petersburg "crazy." 

"That comment shows a complete lack of sensitivity for the folks who lived in the Gas Plant area and gave up so much to get baseball here," Gibbons said, referencing the forced relocation of a predominantly African American neighborhood to make way for what is now Tropicana Field. "The people that gave up so much, that means nothing to Scott Wagman?"

Like Wagman, Gibbons said the waterfront should be off limits to the Rays. But, Gibbons said, "we ultimately have to figure out how to keep the Rays here."

-Cristina Silva and Aaron Sharockman, Times staff writers

Comments

[Thomas]

Gibbons said, "we ultimately have to figure out how to keep the Rays here."

Doesn't the lease that extends through 2027 already do that?

Wasn't the the promise that got Gas Plant residents relocated?

Wasn't that the reason to pay so much in construction and interest to build the Suncoast Dome and then renovate it into Tropicana Field?

Isn't it a little insane that Gibby wants to focus on trying to figure out what's already been determined?

[Rudy]

The people that gave up so much" have already given more than they should. If it costs a penny more than they paid, the answer should be a resounding "ENOUGH". Maybe Mr. Gibbons is listening to some people who don't have a clue what it means to give up anything of their own for the benefit of a handful of strangers.

If the team moves, it would mean less of the alleged tax revenue for St.Pete but is also means that other communities would pick up a bigger portion of the tab for their new digs. In the end, it could be a benefit for St. Petersburg's taxpayers.

[Bobby Fenton]

It sounds like finally someone over there has stepped forward to make some sense. Ensuring the long-term future of the team in the Bay Area? Coming up with a location that benefits the entire region? I'd like to find some death records so we can get this guy as many votes as possible over there right now.

Of course, naturally, the kind of clear-headed thinking Wagman professes was immediately met with the more typical narrow-minded resistance you'd expect from this Gibbons idiot.

I guess now any site but the Trop is off-limits for eternity because people got displaced from it 25 years ago. Now that's the kind of logic that you make progress into the future with!

[get-smart]

They gave up nothing. It was the overflow of 'Peppertown" and they were rental properties. The gas plant and power plant existed prior to residents.

What about the residents that were pushed out of their downtown residencies to make room for the Hilton in the '60s?

It's amazing how the ignorance persists generation after generation and the garbage is spreading throughout the city like a cancer. It's time to take out the garbage.

Cheers -

[Keith]

Thomas: The Suncoast Dome/Tropicana Field was built years before the Rays came into existence. I don't know what was told to the residents of the Gas Plant area when city leaders decided to built the dome on spec (i.e. without a tenant already lined up), but it wasn't done for or by the Rays. The Rays didn't exist at that time. If anything, the Rays bailed out the City by coming along later and providing a tenant to defray some of the cost the city had already undertaken. Why the heck Naimoli signed a 30-year lease for what was already a sub-par facility when the Rays moved in in 1998 is anybody's guess -- it wass just one bad business decision in a long line of business decisions that served to guarantee that the Rays, unlike other expansion teams like the Marlins and Diamonbacks, would be mired in mediocrity for almost 10 years. Thank goodness for the new ownership group that came in a couple years ago. Unfortunately, new ownnership's smarter decision-making cannot make up for the hole that is the Trop. The Rays need a new ballpark in order to sustain their recent success -- either help them build it here, or let them leave. Why anybody would want to force any business to stay and fail -- thereby providing no benefit to anybody -- makes no sense to me whatsoever.

[Scaramouche]

"The Rays need a new ballpark in order to sustain their recent success." Look up the definition of "non sequitur" sometime, Keith. Clause 1 has absolutely no causal or logical connection to clause 2.

Too bad it takes so much energy to scrape the tons of obscuring poop that have been thrown by the freeloaders and the carpetbaggers and the people who think they personally will profit from a huge dump of non-existent public wealth into a freakin' SPORTS TEAM!

And I guess we should be all OK that Derek Jeter apparently wrote a CHECK for the 31,000 square foot McMansion he's having built on 3 lots on Davis Island. Other than a redirect of a bit of NY money (peanuts, in these days of Bailout Beneficence) to the area, what other than a huge ego indulgence and a slap in the face of ordinary folks is this Taj Mahal on the Bay by a guy getting $21 million a year to PLAY BASEBALL?

[Bobby Fenton]

Speaking of a non-sequitur, Sacramouche, I am still trying to figure out how your little harangue of Jeter's mansion has anything to do with potential new ballpark sights. Jeter paid for the house himself. He's not using any public money. If you want to criticize the indulgences of the rich, pro athlete or otherwise, that's fine. But it is pretty lame to continuously attempt convince people that just because pro athletes and owners make a lot of money, and are often not from here, that the "carpetbaggers" (a word you seem so fond of), are here strictly to rip all of us poor, simple locals off. Please.

[Scaramouche]

Bobby - thank you for your lecture from the warm confines of Tampa. I have no problem with team owners doing what every other business is supposed to do (except hedge funds and investment banks and now the US car companies and so forth) -- dig up their own capital for their own profit-making activities. It happened in San Francisco, where the transaction was close to the capitalist model, up to and including the owners paying market rate ground rent for the land. In the present economy, or any other that might survive after it shakes out, there's not enough public money for education, fire, police and roads, but you would have a huge chunk of what remains allocated to a freakin' baseball stadium.

I am not alone in thinking that it's off the charts for people to speak out of one side of their mouths on the wonders of capitalism, and on the other expect to externalize onto the backs of the taxpayer the costs of their very profitable business. You can chime in from Tampa, like the former mayor of Pittsburgh, that "Cities buy stadiums for sports teams. It is the way it is." But the last time I checked, we live in a political and social climate where the rich don't always get to ram it to the less rich. And yes, there is and has been a class war, and if you look at the curves of wages (flat)versus productivity (climbing steadily) in America over the last 40 years, it's absolutely clear that the game is rigged in favor of the haves.

So don't trip over your condescension on your way back across the bridge. You like baseball. Great. Write a check to the team owners to go toward the cost of a stadium. You can even put a lot of zeros behind the first number, if you have that much. But you have no say on the subject of whether this community over on THIS side of the Bay has to eat the crap of the Rays owners. Who are, under the very dictionary definition of the term, "carpetbaggers." And you, and other people who want the unwashed masses to pick up the tab for a billion-dollar stadium so you can "have a pleasant evening experience in the open air," are also in the dictionary under the definition of the word "freeloader." Sounds to me that you are not in the set of "poor, simple locals," either by income or by residence. And yes, the guys with the mansions in New York who were smart enough to sell their "genius" systems for conjuring up derivatives (the fake money that helped blow up the balloon that just popped) to the late, great Bear Stearns and "invest" in the Rays, may be here to enjoy the weather, but mostly are here to take every dollar they can out of the public pocket to make themselves richer.

And they are rich enough to buy their own stadium for CASH, and smart enough, with their skills at "monetizing" and "securitizing," to figure out a way to PRIVATELY FUND a stadium if they want to keep the private islands and the rest.

You tell me -- do you hold to the position that "the public," whether baseball fan or not, including those few who will gain a little monetarily from a single-purpose baseball park, roofed or not, are somehow OBLIGATED to pony up a billion bucks of money they already don't have, to release the Rays boys from their contractual obligations, to throw away the Dome, and all the rest of the crap that these people are expecting is their due as SAINTED AND BLESSED MLB FRANCHISE OWNERS?

As you say, with a little more emphasis, PUH-LEASE.

As to Mr. Jeter, isn't it nice that Joe Sixpack can make it possible for the famous baseball player, whose salary is in large part upped by the value-added to the franchise by public funding of those stadiums, can build a nice little house that's 3/4 of an acre under the roof, not counting the lot, a little place by the Bay? Maybe you'll get invited to the housewarming -- the 900,000 of us who live across the bridge sure won't. But the part I should have emphasized a little more is that Mr. Jeter apparently paid actual cash out of his own ample pocket, the thing the carpetbaggers are working so hard to avoid having to do by picking the pockets of the rest of us.

[get-smart]

I have to agree, not all carpetbaggers are bad. There have been good carpetbaggers too. However, the recent actions of the Ray's NY ownership prove to be of the, 'not so good for the community' type.

Their first morbid action was in destroying St. Petersburg's 93 year spring training tradition. I realize the facilities may not have been 'State of the Art.' However, the Ray's did use Al Lang stadium last season and were just a heartbeat away from being Baseball's World Champion's. So by your logic, this season, the Ray's will be the World Champion's due to the new training camp. We know they can win in the Trop. The only variable is the training facility.

The fact is the Ray's ownership were out to pump and dump the team with a new downtown stadium at any cost. This profile fits these cretins history far better than thinking of them as benefactors of the City.

Now Stu and the boys are stuck. The economy is in the toilet and there is no city out there that is willing or able to spend a half a billion dollars on a new stadium ingratiation. What to do?

Cheers -

[atrulyconcernedcitizen]

Bobby,

Please address some factual questions..
Kalt's projections on both Yankee Stadium and the Mets were absurd. The infrastructure costs alone on Yankee stadium have more than doubled. This is not to pick on Kalt..he is simply the stooge picked to head this particular ripoff...virtually all stadia go WAY over budget with the exception of the Packers redo..but of course the Packers are owned by the citizens of Green Bay...not a New York
Investor. And so the point Bobby is that will you concede that 450 million figure is a joke and we were always talking about at least 3/4 of a billion to a billion dollars?

Now Bobby imagine Sternberg had started two years earlier and with Baker and cheerleaders like you on the radio asking NO PENETRATING QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DEAL..but simply repeating the mantra...we gotta do it or they'll leave...Sternberg gets his stadium on the waterfront..where he would place a team for 81 dates a year with a product that he and MLB said might NOT EVEN BE SUSTAINABLE IN THE TAMPA BAY MARKET....BOBBY STERNBERG/SILVERMAN/SELIG DIDN'T JUST SAY ST. PETE...THEY SAID TAMPA BAY!!!! AND SO thanks to your cheerleading we here in the small burg of St. Pete would be stuck with 3/4 of a billion dollar debt...a bankrupt developer...worthless land to develop and a product that is questionable by the MLB's own statements.

BOBBY...BOBBY...WHAT PART OF THIS DISASTER DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND...YOU'RE BEGINNING TO SOUND LIKE STING IN THE BACKGROUND OF THE DIRE STRAITS 80'S HIT MONEY FOR NOTHIN...I WANT MY MTV..
You're beginning to sound like a thoughtless broken record of I want my baseball stadium...I want my...I want my..I want my baseball stadium.

[Thomas]

Keith says: "The Rays need a new ballpark in order to sustain their recent success -- either help them build it here, or let them leave. Why anybody would want to force any business to stay and fail -- thereby providing no benefit to anybody -- makes no sense to me whatsoever."

It makes no sense because your logic is flawed all over the place.

1. The Rays don't "need" a new stadium, the "want" a new stadium. More directly they "want" a new stadium that someone else pays for.

2. Ballparks do not create nor sustain on field success. That fact is easily verified by simply looking around MLB at "small market" teams that received brand new publicly funded stadiums. Stadiums have absolutely no bearing on the win-lose record. Over the last 8 years, how many playoff appearances have the Twins and A's made? How about the Reds and Pirates? To even suggest the team needs a new stadium to be "competitive" insults the intelligence of everyone reading this blog.

3. St. Pete doesn't have to "help them or let them leave". The team signed a lease (and the new owners knowingly inherited it). The terms of that lease are extremely favorable to the team. We don't owe the Rays squat. The people already paid to build and renovate the Trop. Part of that deal was the team playing there through 2027.

4. No MLB business is "failing", especially the Rays. They may not be making as much as they'd like, but it's absurd to suggest their failing. The television deals, product licensing, and revenue sharing guarantee the Rays a very tidy profit no matter where they play. Unless you're gullible enough to believe the teams claims that they are "losing" money. Claims they refuse to verify by opening their books.

5. The 2008 Rays proved you can have a winner and a great time at the Trop - so there's a great "benefit" to the people of St. Pete.

The Rays can honor the agreement they made. Seriously, we're barely one-third of the way into and they're whining about how tough they have it.

Get real.

[atrulyconcernedcitizen]

Thomas,

As always dead on!!! The other part of Keith and the other baseball prostitutes flawed argument that it's not the Rays fault they're in this stadium...First the city built the Dome without a tenant...long before the Rays...then Vince Naimoli signed some crazy 30 year lease...again not the Rays (I guess he means Sternberg)...but Keith and all of you folks willing to lie down and worship at the altar of Sternberg...are you trying to tell us that Sternberg was unaware of the lease before he signed it. Come on Keith that's not even close to being logical. At least Bobby is always truthful..he knows that Sternberg bought this team to make as much money as possible and that probably included either a pump and dump(still a strong possibility except for the economic meltdown) or blackmailing and extorting our community into a new stadium with the ever present threat of a move. Listen...it's not wrong for Sternberg who is after all a NY Investor to be trying to maximize profits anyway possible. What is WRONG IS WHEN A MAYOR write an oped piece that states he thinks the stadium proposal shows that the Rays ownership cares about St. Pete...I wannna puke!!!! They care about making money...not necessarily evil...but having nothing to do with baseball..the quality of life in St. Pete or Tampa Bay..at least get the motivation straight so you can determine when there are conflicts of interest. We want what is best for St. Pete...Sternberg wants what is best for his bank account!!! And please stop with all the BS about look how much he has invested in the players...it's no more than Naimoli with the hit show..and again it's not because he wants to produce a winner for the folks of ST. Pete...it is an INVESTMENT!!!!!

[Bobby Fenton]

Truly concerned,

Listen, I am really not trying to be a cheerleader to build a new stadium at any cost and without any kind of oversight, and I have never been that way, whether it was on the radio or on this board or anywhere else. And I do think that there needs to be cooperation by both sides (the team and whatever jurisdiction(s) ends up helping them fund it) to make a fair deal. I don't think a lot of the Marlins deal was fair. I am not over here saying "I want a new stadium at all costs", which is how you're painting me to be.

But you, Thomas, and anyone else who keeps harping on this "lease through 2027" ridiculousness is out of their mind. You guys are the ones who need to get back to reality. We all know they will not be playing at the Trop 10 years from now, much less 20. They need and will have a new stadium. Maybe in Pinellas, maybe in Hillsborough, or maybe somewhere else altogether. Someone will get it done, somewhere, period. Now my stance, as someone who thinks having a major league baseball team is a good thing for our area is a good thing for many, many reasons, is that we should be that place, and that we should try to find the best possible deal for both sides in the best possible location to benefit the entire area. This is kind of how it sounds like Mr. Wagman feels, which is why I applaud him.

[Thomas]

Bobby, with all due respect I don't think anyone "knows" that the Rays won't be playing at the Trop ten years from now. They certainly are legally obligated to still be there.

I do know that MLB and the Rays would like us all to just believe that someone, somewhere will "get it done". However, if you look at the trends in stadium construction you'll see it's not even remotely likely.

Therefore, I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion that some unnamed city is going to just magically conjure up a free stadium for the Rays.

Look at the Marlins, they threatened to leave Miami every year for a decade prior to finally figuring out a way to circumvent the voters and get a stadium. They never had a single option to move. No one was going to "get it done". That's why they ended up back in front of the Miami-Dade Commissioners each year with a new "built us a stadium by xxxx date or we're outta here" schtick.

[Thomas]

Also, just for entertainment value, can you answer this for me: Your contention is that the current Top lease is somehow not enforceable and the Rays can leave. Yet you believe a new stadium and lease would keep the Rays here. Even though you just established that the Rays don't actually need to honor any agreements they sign. What happens if the team gets a new stadium and then after 10 years they decide again that they'd prefer something else? It's realistic considering they only made it 10 years into their current agreement before these absurd stadium discussions started. In your mind, at what point does the lease become enforceable? Or is it a constant cycle of "do what they want when they want it"?

[Scaramouche]

Quoth Bobby: "And I do think that there needs to be cooperation by both sides (the team and whatever jurisdiction(s) ends up helping them fund it) to make a fair deal."

That sounds so Rational and Reasonable, let us all sit down and talk about this like Gentlemen. Except the seats at the table are reserved for the least gentlemanly among us.

What's a "fair deal," and in the legal sense, what is the "consideration" the Rays boys are putting in to what you see as a much more magical calculus than a simple business transaction (the supposed wonders of Having An MLB Franchise In Town, And How That Makes A City "Big League")?

The MLB has pretty much been able to slice off all the prime cuts recently, without too much public complaint about the bleeding, because the shell game of Reaganism produced a patina and chimaera of "wealth" out of which a few dozen billion would not be missed much (until later).

Folks are now realizing that there's a new reality, that trillions of paper wealth has gone back to being just disordered electrons and worthless sheets, up in smoke, and the New Wall Streeters are looting our FUTURE, not just our present, for money to continue The Game.

"Cooperation," my patoot. I differ with concernedcitizen that "making money any which way you can" is even generally OK. There are patterns and practices that are great for the individual, maybe, but are deadly for the culture, the society and the species. One of them is the game the Rays Carpetbaggers have been playing and are without question continuing, under the covers and behind closed doors, to play: Take money from the public treasury, even money that's not there and may not be in the future, so what if you do it by getting the "representative government" bosses to incur debts you will at best struggle to repay off the tax revenues you MAY get from whatever economic structure shakes out in the future.

"Making money," in the sense of The Mayor signing off on issuance of municipal debt, and entering good-ol'-boy backslap lease deals where The Public picks up the costs and The Boys walk with the profits, IS NOT OKAY. It is different IN KIND from activities that create food and NEEDED (not Derek Jeter-Living-Large) shelter and roads and sewers and water supplies and health care and Real Incomes from Real Work.

People who live real-er lives than most of us do, including our own homeless, the Original Australians, the Kalahari Bushmen and such, would look at the whole MLB schtick as a non-survival exercise in greed by the few, and either exile or just kill off the folks who proposed to profit from the hunting and gathering of others by grabbing a share of their grub in exchange for a light show.

What ever happened to the "sanctity of contracts" that seemingly applies like a one-way ratchet to TARP skimming of "deals" made in the form of "retention payments" to AIG-FP derivative-scammers, and not to LEASE CONTRACTS between MLB entities and city governments? You don't even have to try to answer that one -- it's self-evident how Things Work if we let 'em.

[Scaramouche]

And look at the "fair deal" that voter/taxpayer resistance in a much more democratic City By The Bay resulted in: San Francisco Giants Stadium, where the only public contribution was public-transit improvements to serve the stadium area, which also benefit the GENERAL PUBLIC. The rest of the cost, the expenses and ground lease, being borne by the business interests of the Giants MLB Franchise et al.

And what's that bit about St. Louis?
The term sheet for that project says

Public Contribution: $87.0M (22% of total project cost)
Private Contribution: $301.0M (78%)
Third Party Contribution: $ 0.0M ( 0%)

Public Funding: • State contribution - $42M total: $30M from tax credits resulting from the Cardinals donating 2/3 of the land , and $12M from the Missouri Department of Transportation
• County contribution - $45M of hotel tax bonds

Private Funding: $301M –$200M of project debt and $101M of equity.

Looky! The Cards' financial whiz-bangs apparently were able to "monetize" and "securitize" the revenue streams from the franchise to borrow PRIVATELY the bulk of their "contribution" to their own long-term profit.

This is not "time to be reasonable." It's time to recognize that BASIC NEEDS come way before Ribbon-Cutting Opportunities for politicians and welfare-state-for-capitalism, socialized-costs-privatized-profit "deals."

[Bobby Fenton]

Thomas,

First of all, if there is an ironclad lease and everything is all locked up and there is nothing the Rays can do about it until 2027, then where did this entire issue even come from? Why are we talking about it? What is this blog? Why are we here? Is everybody making it all up just because it's fun to debate? Why would we even be bothering to talk about it?

Second of all, I wasn't trying to imply that the threat of the Rays leaving is the major impetus behind this. However, you mentioned current trends in stadium construction as proof that it isn't going to happen, and I'm not sure what you mean. EVERY TEAM IN BASEBALL that needs or has needed a new stadium has already built one or is now in the process of building one. Many in the last 10 years. The only two teams left in dumps are the Rays and the A's. So I'm not sure what the trend is you refer to other than teams needing new places and eventually getting exactly what they need. The same is true in the other sports too if you look at everyone's home stadium/arenas around pro sports. There are only like 6 teams left acorss the 4 major sports who aren't now already set up for the forseeable future.

I'm not ignoring the current economic climate, but it's just that, current. This is big picture stuff here. Construction isn't starting tomorrow. Nevermind the fact that the longer you wait, the more this will cost. You mentioned cost overruns. Well what will this place cost if they start building it in 15 years, a billion dollars? I don't see how that helps, especially when we all know that this is never going to go on that long. You are naive if you think that lease ever sees anywhere near the end of its life.

[Thomas]

Good Afternoon Bobby,

Where did this issue come from? Come on Bob, you are way too smart of a guy to ask these types of questions. The issue was raised by the Rays for the Rays to the direct benefit of the Rays. The team started floating this idea that they can't function in the Trop any more and therefore St. Pete needs to pony up for a new stadium or the team would have to start looking elsewhere. All subsequent comments regarding the lease are conjecture. Mine included. The only "official" thing we heard was John Wolfe basically telling Silverman to pump his brakes on the whole "leaving St. Pete" idea.

Anyway, if I'm naive to think that the Trop lease sees anywhere near the end of it's life - then what are you for thinking a new stadium and lease will?

[Scaramouche]

Say, Bobby --

Maybe if the government parties in the lease transaction were not speaking through straw hats, like our illustrious mayor and maybe most Council members and maybe staff too for all I know, there WOULD be an "ironclad" aspect to that lease, and enforcement of its terms. Rather than some squishy old-Florida backslapping and Strongarming, like what's in process now.

Bobby, maybe in your vocabulary "need" equals "greed," but tell you what: the MLB franchises do not "need" new single-purpose stadiums, they just WANT them. Hey, didn't I hear that even a few of the big "bonus babies" among the players are suggesting that the player salary curve, like the rest of the Big Bubble, needs a dose of reality to bring it back down to at least "right-size?"

Tell you what, people "need" food and clothing and shelter and heating/cooling and medical care and sewers and schools and all the infrastructure that has supported a population that created enough Real Wealth to launch pro sports on its trajectory (an unsustainable asymptotic curve, by the way.) But that Wealth was sucked off, drained away, turned to dross by the "needs" of a few people, including the Rays Frnachise New Yawk owners, to "live large." Driven across any bridges lately? Something like 20% of them are in serious structural trouble. A lot can actually be done with a billion dollars that's a whole lot more beneficial than a gift to a bunch of Wall Streeters who could WRITE A CHECK FOR THE COST OF THE DARN STADIUM, OR BORROW THE MONEY THEMSELVES USING THEIR GREAT FINANCIAL SMARTS, LIKE WAS DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO, WHERE "DEMOCRACY" ACTUALLY SEEMS TO TRUMP CRONYISM.

'Bout the only people I see wanting to get "exactly what they need (sic)" are a small set of freeloaders who want their "pleasant place to spend an evening," their short-term profits, and legs up in the political system that rewards municipal "leaders" who break the public piggy bank open for their buddies.

Stay in Tampa, okay? And if YOU and like minded people there are able to shove a "stadium deal" past the folks in your municipality, good-oh (and Shame! too!) on you, just don't look across the Bay to try to Raype this area's future by saddling it with a share of your indulgences. I live downtown in St. Pete now, and all this dreck about second-class and "dying" and "cotton tops" is jsut so much poo flung on the wall.

You ain't gonna be any more successful than that big fraud Rick K in "proving" how "needed' and "beneficial" a billion-dollar stadium would be, "paired recevelopment" or no. And the reason there's argument is that there are a few with parochial interests, carpetbaggers from long range or short, who keep boosterizing in support of the back-office crap that might leave Pinellas gasping under the millstone of a "great new stadium, where the rich go to be seen and the poor people stay home and watch TV."

Hoe much was it just announced that the new New Yawk stadiums have cost already, and how much are the tickets?

If baseball is no longer the Great American Pastime, which it's not, but instead it's just a rich man's evening outin those $1,000 or now $2,600 seats, tell me again why us wage slaves (even those who grew up idolizing Babe and Stan and Ernie and Willie and PeeWee and laughing with and at Casey and Yogi and all) ought to be mortgaging and/or handing over the money that would buy street and road repairs and teachers and health department staff and all the other stuff that benefits the many, not just the few?

The only other people I see who "get exactly what they want, eventually," are the charming young ladies featured on the "Bridezilla" TV program.

As far as I am concerned, you can take your phony air of sweet reason, alternating with smug condescension, and Go. Away., as they young people say.

[Good 'ol Boy]

Bottom Line,

Does it make sense for a Mayor to "allow" a sports team to move (i.e. release the team from their contractual obligation) for the "benefit of the entire region and to ensure the team has a long future in the Tampa Bay Area".

Or, should a Mayor insist that a sports team perform as stated in the lease?

My opinion is that the Mayor's loyalty is to the City and it's residents and not to the region as a whole or the team.

Therefore, since the lease agreement with the sports team has value ( and that value belongs to the city (and it's residents) a Mayor should insist that the team perform as required in the lease, if the team feels they wish to move the city must be compensated as requied in the agreeemnt(or by the courts).

A Mayor WAGman, seems to be suggesting that for the good of the region and the team, he would be willing to release the team from it's obligation to play (and Pay) in St. Pete.

So...Who would WAGman be representing?
Makes you wonder.

[atrulyconcernedcitizen]

Bobby,

Please do not think I'm picking on you. Alas you are the ONLY baseball supporter who tried to make sense. Keith and some of the others are simply baseball groupies.

And so could you Bobby, or anybody answer this burning question?

Within 30 days of pulling their first waterfront stadium proposal...the following took place...MLB luminaries as powerful as Bud Selig and our own Matt Silverman stated for public consumption...ON THE RECORD...that the TAMPA BAY (not just St. Pete) market may not be viable and perhaps cannot support an MLB franchise.

Consider those statements again. They are simply OUTRAGEOUS!!! Bobby if I offer to sell you a car and say...ohh by the way I'm not sure it will work...how about a house...ohhh it may fall down..but it's such a great idea..

Can ANYBODY tell me how we would even CONSIDER spending a HALF A BILLION dollars on a product..the manufacturers seriously doubt can even work in our market. How did those scumbags get away with this...give us a half billion dollar stadium...you won't..well MLB has serious doubts whether the product works here anyway!!!

[Read the contract]

The stadium use agreement spells out each party's respective obligations-the City to provide the Dome, the Club to play mlb in the Dome until 2027. The City may enjoin any attempts by the Club to move. Although the first dome construction bond secured by the TDC revenues is scheduled for payoff in 2016, Baker refinanced the City's bond used for the ball field buildout thus, extending the number of years that City excise taxes have been pledged for repayment. (Small wonder City government bond rating has dropped )

[Scaramouche]

Read the contract -- does this mean that if the Rays owners walk away from the Dome and default on THEIR deal, we the citizens can walk away from the tax-funded revenue bond and default on OURS?

Oh, that's right -- the "citizens" HAVE to act "honorably," to keep the rating agencies (who did such a great job of vetting the "securities" created by the guys who now own the Rays franchise when they were still proud to be New Yawkers) from dropping our bond rating still further.

Which of course would mean that the City gov't (that's US TAXPAYERS, at least when it comes to paying the piper, if NOT TO HAVING ANY VOICE IN HOW "OUR" MONEY GETS SPENT) will be even more out of pocket for much higher interest on any future debt our Mayor and Council "decide for our benefit" to incur.

Do I have that right?

Hey Aaron and Cristina, do you still occasionally read this stuff? Is the prolonged silence here just because there is nothing to report, or because what's happenin' has moved to the back rooms and the offices of Ed Strongarm and Company and Da Mayr, and one gets tired of the annoying persistence of people who are tired of having their pockets picked by a bunch of freeloaders and carpetbaggers? Are we just waiting for another October Surprise?

[Read the contract]

No. The City is still obligated on the bonds. The Mayor is obligated to enforce the Stadium Use Agreement (the contract) unless City Council approves of amending the Stadium Use Agreement. Thus, the Mayor would be obligated to seek an injunction to prevent the Rays from moving if the Rays attempted to move before 2027. It is more likely that the Rays will seek to amend the existing contract to get a new stadium. Considering how sloppy the finances were on the Rays owners' waterfront proposal, it makes one wonder whether the Rays owners were really angling for a new stadium or whether this was just an exercise to enable the Rays' owners to suggest in a couple of years they don't have to pay the City that much in damages to leave the City (in the event that a Judge declined to grant the City's injunction preventing the Rays from moving). The Trop visioning exercise in conjunction with the RFP process gave the Rays the plausible suggestion of "no damages" if the Rays leave because the City could actually receive tax revenue if the Trop area were redeveloped. The Rays would simply dispute that there is a real economic impact at all that could not be replaced with other retail and residential uses of the Trop property. And, that may actually be true, confirming what other economists have found-that the "economic development impacts" from pro stadiums are just not that significant in comparison to the communities costs in subsidies. How many baseball players own homes in St. Pete? shop in St. Pete? The people who live in St. Pete that are employed by the Rays through third part contracts (food service/concessions) receive minimum wage. Other than a few team physicians, the Times, and Larry Wiliiams' radiology business, does anyone hear which businesses in St. Petersburg (other than Ferg's) benefits from the Rays? In fact, some communities made more money when a pro team was striking than during regular season when the were playing. The Rays' argument would be similar- that the City would make just as much, if not more money, if the Trop site were redeveloped rather than being used for a baseball stadium. In other words, were lawyers for the Rays putting on this whole new stadium charade (Trop visioning session) in order to have evidence later to prove that the damages the Rays would pay the City to move (if a Judge allowed them) should be little or none at all? City memos reference "Predisposition Agreement" for example. Which attorneys for the Rays were writing those agreements? Unsophisticated nattering nabobs are giving away the City's bargaining position by conceding a move out of the City is a possibility. Contracts 101-don't negotiate against yourself..