If Rays follow Marlins, partners will guide stadium site
TAMPA - The groundbreaking Saturday on a new Florida Marlins stadium showed fan convenience doesn't drive multimillion-dollar decisions such as where to put a ballpark.
A committee exploring a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays presented data Thursday showing sites in more populous Hillsborough County are preferable to Pinellas sites based on drive time, business activity and population growth.
But with more than a half-dozen locations to choose from across its market, the Marlins settled on one at the far southern end: the Orange Bowl site, west of downtown, in Miami's Little Havana.
One reason: Miami and Miami-Dade County are paying most of the tab. The $640 million ballpark complex, complete with retractable roof, will be financed through the sale of $536 million in county-backed bonds.
Bond payments will come from tourist taxes or, if they fall short, the government's general fund. The team's owners are on the hook for $155 million.
In return, the two-time World Series champion Florida Marlins will be renamed the Miami Marlins.
Little Havana is a bull's-eye for the 2.4 million people living in Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, the name given to one of three divisions of the giant metropolitan area known as Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach.
The entire metro area has 5.4 million people, according to the July 1 population estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau.
But the new baseball site means a long drive for fans in the other two divisions, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. They were better served by the more centrally located Land Shark Stadium, formerly Dolphins Stadium, the converted football complex where the Marlins have played since their inception in 1993.
Land Shark Stadium is farther north, close to the Broward County line, in Miami Gardens. Most of the options considered by the Marlins, including one adjacent to the football stadium, were north of the Little Havana site.
How population centers will drive the decision on a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium remains to be seen.
The committee exploring options for the Rays, called the ABC Coalition, dwelled on "trade areas," or population centers, in its presentation Thursday, taking pains to point out how four other options all have better numbers than downtown St. Petersburg.
Downtown is where the Rays now play, at Tropicana Field, and where the team wanted to keep playing: A year ago, the Rays abandoned a fast-moving plan for a new ballpark at the waterfront site of Progress Energy Park, home of Al Lang Field.
Downtown St. Petersburg is where Mayor Rick Baker still wants to see the team play. St. Petersburg, where the Rays are under contract to play through 2027, has threatened to file a lawsuit if the team attempts to move outside the city limits.
As early as December, the ABC Coalition presented research showing that among 11 Major League Baseball cities surveyed, Tampa Bay's team has the smallest percentage of its market living within a 30-minute drive of its stadium.
The figure is 19 percent for Tropicana Field, compared with 48 percent for Seattle, next lowest on the list, and 79 percent for Denver, the highest.
West Shore, downtown Tampa and the Florida State Fairgrounds are within a 30-minute drive for more people than mid-Pinellas or downtown St. Petersburg, according to the ABC Coalition's research.
The committee has not made a recommendation on a location but poses a "Key Question" in its presentation: "Would more or less of 19.2% of the population attend a Rays' game IF the stadium was within a 30-(minute) drive?"
The coalition, empaneled last June as the Rays abandoned plans for the waterfront site, is not taking up the issue of financing. Its mission, according to its Web site, is to broaden fan support, enhance community support and identify possible stadium sites.
The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area has a population of 2.7 million – slightly more than the population of Miami-Dade-Kendall alone, according to census figures.
Add in the Sarasota metropolitan area to the south of Tropicana Field, which the coalition does in some of its research, and the Rays market grows to 3.4 million.
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