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With a March 31 deadline from the city and county regarding their $1.3 billion baseball stadium proposal, Tampa Bay Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg says he still hasn’t decided what the team will do. 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 at the Suncoast Tiger Bay’s State of the Bay event on Monday, the Tampa Bay Times reports. “We have to make a decision, so we’ll have something by then.”
If the Tampa Bay Rays do not meet that March 31 deadline, it could lose out on a share of $700 million as the team would be in default and the agreements approved by St. Petersburg and Pinellas County last summer could be voided.
When Sternberg was asked what would help him in making his decision, he replied that he didn’t know, but did say he would “make sure our organization does what’s necessary to meet whatever conditions we need to meet.”
Sternberg wouldn’t say how much more money the Rays need to open a new stadium by 2029, a year later than planned. The team has said it cannot cover rising costs caused by delays in earlier votes by the county and city and the impact of playing elsewhere since Tropicana Field had its roof blown off during Hurricane Milton. The Rays will play their 2025 season at Tampa’s Steinbrenner Field.
St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, who was also at the event, told the Tampa Bay Times that he met with Stuart Sternberg last week and has another meeting with him on Tuesday. In addition to wanting an update on where the team stands on if it is prepared to meet its obligations, Welch said there is “another issue that we need to work through.” When asked what that issue is, Welch declined to answer and said to ask Sternberg.
Welch also stated during the event that the damaged Tropicana Field can be repaired in time for the 2026 baseball season.
“We are required to repair that stadium. Our folks believe that can be done by the start of the 2026 season,” WUSF-NPR reports he said. “That will give the Rays a professional major league place to play for the duration of the current contract, so we have to do that, and most of those dollars will be reimbursed by FEMA and by insurance.”