A positive autopsy of a failed Rays Stadium trade

An autopsy is required for epic deaths that arise from dark circumstances. The recent Rays/Hines collapse for the redevelopment of an 86-acre historic gas plant section in downtown St. Petersburg is no exception.

Mayor Ken Welch suggests that another process could be carried out to select a new redevelopment concept for a site owned by “master developers” and highly valued taxpayers, so our Homerun Citizens Coalition thought it would be timely to perform an autopsy to identify fatal defects in the Rays/Hines contract.

The first autopsy discovery was that politicians create terrible real estate developers, and in fact, that’s where trouble began. Mayor Welch took office in early 2022. He immediately called for proposals for all new gas plant development. This time, I was forced to comply with the mayor’s 33-page list of terms. These conditions led to City Hall determining the final site content and blinding market preferences. Naturally, the outcome was a fatal flawed concept and was never possible. The odds are that the future epic gas factory redevelopment scheme, designed by politicians in place of market actors, also includes similar flaws.

After the Rays/Hines Consortium was chosen as winner, the hub arrogance and financial illiteracy of several elected officials of the Pinellas Committee and St. Petersburg City Council were fully on display as they boasted to the citizens as they were brought by simply voting on this multi-billion dollar project.

Since 2022, Homerun and others have repeatedly not publicly warned that none of the developers competing for the gas factory project have the money to build it. And I believe that’s exactly what happened. We weren’t worthy of detailed play, but we have to mostly sympathize with poor Rays/Hines executives who have sprinted through places like JP Morgan, Blackstone, Apollo, KKR, Goldman Sachs.

-We are building a brand new stadium in the same location that has failed for over 20 years.

Our site concept is eating valuable acres to build low-use parking for transport at baseball games.

-We have planned many times a few entertainment districts in a better position in St. Pete, known as Sandial.

・We will build a huge number of new office spaces. We are sorry if lending to a new office project is a career suicide for today’s bankers.

We also build nearly 6,000 condos and apartments, and future residents are affected by baseball and concert traffic jams, fan cheating and late-night noise every 100 days.

To conclude it, there will be ample split museum exhibits, historical markers and placards during the new development.

In contrast, the home run did not consistently make a claim on the “self” redevelopment concept, where the city sells site’s Purcell by Percels for appropriate market value for patients and obtains the best possible value for taxpayers. Local businesses, developers and entrepreneurs buy parcels and their new owners risk their money to develop a gas plant site block block by block, following the vision of what they need in St. Petersburg. The city still manages key policy decisions, such as zoning, Building Heights, new street grids, and some sites reserved for parks and public use. Otherwise, they will give the new owner a wide range of freedom and develop their plots.

The discovery of the second autopsy: perhaps baseball and popular new mayors, elected officials and other influential groups sang with support, repeatedly unable to admit the obvious: the Rays/Hines deal was unpopular with the masses. Mayor Welch misused all loopholes to avoid popular votes on the project. Also, the shortcomings of the Rays/Hines concept were dizzyingly evident compared to the default options of cities simply pursuing their own redevelopment strategies.

The Rays/Hines concept gave the for-profit ray/Hines entity the land value of almost every gas plant. My own concept captured the value of urban residents. The Rays/Hines concept has forced the city and county into debt. Our concept has increased tax revenue sources. Rays/Hines has taken Pinellas County, which is 20% of the tourism tax, for decades. Our concept was to use these dollars for tourism promotion, new infrastructure and beach revival. And as a job creator, the Rays Baseball business has less career track work than any other form of commercial development.

The third autopsy finding was a failure by local media and elites, calling for false myths used to sell the Rays/Hines deal to the public.

You will need to choose a master developer and provide it on hundreds of millions of dollars of free land to redevelop your gas plant site. garbage.

This site is developed faster by the master developer than we do it ourselves. garbage.

This site requires baseball to “activate” development there. Garbage, squares.

People in South St. Pete cannot find career opportunities unless offered by the government through schemes like the Rays/Hines deal. Garbage and shaming for the residents of South St. Pete.

The Rays/Hines deal solves South St. Pete’s social and economic problems. Hollow bullying.

When Tropicana Field was built 35 years ago, employment opportunities promised to residents of the gas factory were never delivered. At least half the fake. These opportunities were never offered by politicians or baseball promoters who made such promises. But the Tampa Bay area has nevertheless been one of the country’s strongest markets for job creation in the last 40 years, and is being used by thousands of former gas plants and South St. Pete residents.

Fourth autopsy finding: The ray does not have a closure in the front office. Instead of developing stadium solutions in logical locations to access a fanbase and appropriate surface parking, they waste two years trying to steal $1 billion in handouts from taxpayers in St. Pete and Pinellas County. For more than a decade now, a long list of seemingly excellent Tampa Bay Stadium locations has become available for trade, with the Rays front office unable to obtain facilities and associated local government support for stadium funding. I don’t know if they’re dozing off, deliberately passing through the site, or if they shaking and missed it, but the list of stadium sites that have escaped has become embarrassingly long.

On the Tampa side of the bay, the list includes the city of Ybor, the long vacant Georgetown site, the riverside site that has become an armature piece, and the former Macy’s Warehouse site (in the heart of Southernpa, there is rail access!). Don’t be surprised if you miss the right 53 acres of corrupt West Shore Mall that was put for sale two months ago.

On the Pinellas side, they were aware of building a waterfront stadium in downtown St. Petersburg, passing the Carillon and Toytown sites near the entrance to the Howard Frankland Bridge. And someone else recently bought the Derby Lane site. Will they pursue the old HSN campus for sale now? Did they destroy too many goodwill with Pinellas County officials to get shots at the former Airco Golf Course, which the county owned? To paraphrase the great baseball manager Casey Stengel: can’t these Rays executives play this game?

Tom Mullins was a former Raymond James investment banker and was affiliated with the Homerun Citizens Coalition, which publicly opposed the Rays/Hines deal.