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St. Petersburg mayor Ken Welch said the city is prepared to move on without the Tampa Bay Rays if the currently precarious stadium deal falls through. The Rays have played home games in St. Petersburg since the team’s inception in 1998.
During his State of the City address on Tuesday, Welch claimed that St. Petersburg has other options if the Tampa Bay Rays decide to not accept the plan to build a $1.3 billion stadium and mixed-use development of the Historic Gas Plant District that surrounds it.
“We’ve never been this close,” Welch said about the stadium deal with the Tampa Bay Rays. “We’ve got all the local funding on board, we’ve got the 12 agreements signed, we have the agreements the Rays signed in hindsight five months ago to move forward. I’m hopeful that can happen.”
He added, “The plan is vetted and feasible. The only thing we need to more forward is for the Rays the agreement signed six months ago. If we still have that willing partner, we will move forward, which is my clear preference.”
Ken Welch did, however, add one caveat to his efforts to keep the Rays in St. Petersburg.
“We will not pursue the deal at any cost,” Welch said. “The greatness and future of St. Pete does not depend solely on this deal, and I am confident that we have given this endeavor our very best effort. It’s an effort and a process we can all be proud of.”
In his State of the City speech, Mayor Ken Welch talked about the Tampa Bay Rays, the goal of a new stadium, and the team's part in making it happen. pic.twitter.com/cSrUkUuP25
— Spectrum Bay News 9 (@BN9) February 4, 2025
Tampa Bay Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg says he still hasn’t decided what the team will do despite a March 31 deadline from the city and county looming. The Rays have until March 31 to meet a checklist of obligations that would unlock public funding for the stadium and surrounding development.
“We’ll decide how we want to proceed at that point, well before that point,” Sternberg said last month at the Suncoast Tiger Bay’s State of the Bay event. “We have to make a decision, so we’ll have something by then.”
If the Rays don’t agree to the proposed deal, they would be in default on its agreement with the city and lose out on a share of $700 million that was recently approved by the city and Pinellas County.
When asked if he would consider new terms with the Rays, Welch replied, “It’s not like we both haven’t spent a lot of time talking about what the right deal would be, and so now to say, ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I think it would undermine any efforts moving forward.”