St. Petersburg mayor has spoken with investors interested in buying Rays

St. Petersburg Mayor Kenneth Welch says he has spoken to several investors interested in keeping the Tampa Bay Rays in the city and vows the redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District will continue with or without the team.

Welch made his position clear Monday in statement responding to a report from The Athletic, a prominent sports publication, saying Major League Baseball and its owners want the Ray’s current owner Stuart Sternberg to sell the team.

In the statement, Welch says he and other local leaders have “had conversations with various individuals who are interested in keeping the Rays in St. Petersburg” about the future of the team and a desire to keep it local.

Welch did not disclose who the individuals were, and a spokesperson did not respond to an email asking who the mayor had spoken to.

“If the current owner decides to sell the franchise,” Welch says in the statement, “we will work diligently and cooperatively with any new owner.”

A Rays spokesperson says in an email that “at this time, we have no comment.”

Sternberg told The Athletic that “I’m interested to read about what our industry partners have told you about our franchise and its future.”

Photo by Mark Wemple

In the story posted to its website Sunday night, The New York Times-owned sports publication says the league and other owners are frustrated with Sternberg writing that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the owners “appear out of patience.”

The report says MLB wants the team to stay in Florida, either in downtown St. Petersburg, where a deal for a $1.3 billion stadium is teetering, or Ybor City. Moving the team to Orlando is also a possibility.

The team is worth $1.25 billion, according to Forbes, 

The Athletic names the family of Edward DeBartolo Jr. and Dex Imaging CEO Dan Doyle Jr. as potential suitors.

The DeBartolo family made its fortune, in part, as mall developers and owned the San Francisco 49ers football team during its heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

DeBartolo Development is based in Tampa and company President and COO Edward M. Kobel did not respond to an email Monday.

As for Doyle, he was previously mentioned as a potential buyer for the team in 2023. A spokesperson for Dex did not respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

Joe Molloy, a local businessman who is chairman and CEO of JAM Sports Ventures and formerly a minority owner of the New York Yankees, is also mentioned in the story.

Molloy, who did not respond to a request for comment for this story, told to the Tampa Bay Times Sunday he is leading a group of local investors interested in buying the team.

MLB's frustration with the Rays stems from the issues surrounding the construction of the new ballpark, with The Athletic writing that “after 17 years of trying to find a new stadium, Sternberg appears to be on the clock to firm up a long-term plan, be it by selling or building.”

Locally, there is more at stake than just the stadium.

As part of the agreement between the city and the Rays is the redevelopment of the 87-acre Historic Gas Plant District, the historic Black community displaced by the construction of Interstate 175 and Tropicana Field in the 1980s.

The $6 billion project the Rays and its development partner are slated to build is an 8 million-square-foot multi-use development that is expected to deliver more than 5,400 residential units; 1,250 workforce and attainable housing units; 1.4 million square feet of office and medical space; 750,000 square feet of retail space; 750 hotel rooms; and 14 acres of parks and open space. This along with the Woodson African American Museum of Florida and an amphitheater.

Publicly there is an uncertainty about what happens to the project if the Rays walk away from the stadium deal, uncertainty that may involve lawsuits to clarify.

Welch, however, says that with or without the Rays' involvement “my administration has been and will continue to be focused on using the Historic Gas Plant property to benefit the community and fulfill the promise of economic development and opportunity made to the African-American community in St. Petersburg.”

That the Rays ownership finds itself in its current position is both a surprise and not at all unexpected.

Photo by Mark Wemple

For nearly two decades now, the organization has attempted to find a replacement for Tropicana Field, trying and failing to make deals in Tampa and St. Petersburg and even floating an idea to play half its game in Montreal.

Every one of the plans failed even as the team thrived on the field.

Those days appeared to be in the past on Sept. 18, 2023, when the Rays, Pinellas County and the city of St. Petersburg announced plans to build a new stadium and redevelopment the Historic Gas Plant District.

The deal called for the team to put up $600 million for the construction of the stadium and cover all the cost overruns. Pinellas County would provide $312.5 million in bonds tied to bed tax revenue and the city $280 million.

The motto that day, and for months to follow, was “Here to Stay.”

But as happened so often with the Rays, the deal began to fall apart.

It started after Hurricane Milton tore the roof off Tropicana Field eventually forcing the team to move its games to Tampa for at least one season and delaying the groundbreaking and opening day of the stadium.

In the meantime, the Pinellas County Commission, dealing with the aftereffects of Hurricanes Milton and Helene, twice delayed votes on its portion of the financing that would come from bonds tied to the tourism tax. (It approved the bonds Dec. 17.)

The team accused the county of killing the deal and making it impossible for the Rays to move ahead with the agreement.

Just minutes after Pinellas voted to hold up its end of the bargain, the Rays issued a statement saying “the county’s delay has caused the ballpark's completion to slide into 2029.

“As a result, the cost of the project has increased significantly, and we cannot absorb this increase alone. When the county and city wish to engage, we remain ready to solve this funding gap together.”

The team has not relented publicly on that sentiment.

It has a March 31 deadline to show the Rays can pay for its portion of the project. If it fails to meet that deadline, the deal essentially be dead.

“It’s not a question of whether we have the funds. We do,” team president Matt Silverman told The Athletic.

“The question is whether it’s a good use of those funds to commit us and MLB to this ballpark for the next 30 years.”

Welch, for his part, says the city, county and team negotiated a fair agreement and that it’s in the best interest of all involved to move ahead with the new stadium.

“The Rays have acknowledged they have the financial capacity to move forward with the agreements they signed and celebrated,” Welch says. “We are prepared to follow the timeline agreed to in the contracts.”