Comments on: Rays Have Influenced Bucs

By: Blake

Blake — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:18:49 +0000

Joe, I think you make some great points, and also some I don’t agree with. You are absolutely right that the waterfront stadium would have been a gem, but I don’t think the Rays ever had any intention of building that stadium at that location. I think that was just the first step in their plan to move the team to Tampa, where more of the population can get to the stadium with ease. The people in South Tampa are not the ones that have the problem with driving to the game. The people in Temple Terrace, North Tampa, Lutz, Brandon, etc. are the ones that are turned away by the additional twenty minutes it would take to drive to a St. Pete stadium over driving to one over off of Westshore or in downtown Tampa. I still think that the stadium designed for St. Pete would look just as amazing sitting on waterfront off of the Westshore area in Tampa.

In any case, I don’t think the team will leave the area because despite the lack of a fully-developed fanbase, there is no remaining untapped market that would be more successful and I think the Rays are doing a great job of building a strong fanbase by placing an emphasis on building up the interest of children and teenagers in the team while also trying to build the overall fanbase in general.

By: Flea

Flea — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:39:34 +0000

Joe, would love to one day drink a BEER with you and explain why, from a pure business and responsibility standpoint, it made no sense for the ST. Pete locals to pay a load for this stadium.

There might be a few people who would actually say building anything of extreme value on the waterfront in Florida is downright moronic. A little thing called hurricanes and floods. Also, there was no proof the stadium would bring in fans. You want to build a stadium. Fine. If there’s really a demand, sell 20,000 advance season tickets or seat licenses and bring the city anything concrete that this thing was going to work.

And, if construction costs are such a bargain in this economy, and the PROFITIBLE Rays and their owners are so loaded and the team has gone so far up in value since Sternberg bought the team, then Sternberg should have been able to cough up more money for this “can’t-miss” place.

Sternberg himself hardly spent a bundle to get this agreement sold to the people. And not much of what they did do was very creative. Some old money in Tampa probably paid them off to step off the gas in hopes of getting the deal done in Tampa one day

By: Joe

Joe — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:20:50 +0000

Exactly Dave, the people that whined about building a stadium on the waterfront… there already is one; has been there for decades.

There wasn’t one bad element to this concept. Man, what a lost opportunity.

By: dave

dave — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:58:12 +0000

Gotta agree with ya on this one. I live in downtown St. Pete, as a condo owner, and was so looking forward to making the 3 minute WALK to the new waterfront stadium. What a GREAT idea and, guess what, there’s a baseball field already there that’s not being used, Al Lang. Unfortunatley, these freakin’ idiots deserve to lose this team. What I don’t understand, is there was about a 50% split on it, why wasn’t more effort put into making it work. The whole thing was dropped without much of a fight. The drawings for the proposed stadium were fantastic, state-of-the-art stuff. The pinheads at ESPN would have known we played in St. Pete, not Tampa.
A lost opportunity that would have made downtown St Pete the envy of all Florida, and would have attracted SO much revenue, what a shame!