Tampa Bay Rays, Hines, to Develop LEED-Certified Ballpark on St. Petersburg Waterfront

Though their respective performances on the field could not be more wildly different, New York City and Tampa Bay do share a baseball connection; it’s where the Yankees hold their spring training and home to George Steinbrenner. The Boss even threatened to move the Bronx Bombers to Tampa during the Yanks’ lean years in the late 80s and early 90s. This off-season has been no exception, with Joe Torre’s ouster and A-Rod’s initially Scott Boras-less contract negotiations both taking place at the club’s offices in Tampa.

Since they joined Major League Baseball in 1998, Tampa Bay’s club, the Rays, who were known as the Devil Rays through the close of the 2007 season, have held the dubious honor of playing in baseball’s worst ballpark, an indoor domed stadium called Tropicana Field. They’ve also been baseball’s worst team, consistently losing over 90 games a year and finishing in last place in the grueling American League East- home to the Yanks and Boston- every year except one.

Still, owner Stuart Stenberg, a New Yorker and former partner at Goldman Sachs, remains committed to building a winner. The club unveiled its new name, logo, and colors a few weeks ago, and at a news conference yesterday announced official plans for a new $450 million, 34,000-seat open-air ballpark on the St. Petersburg waterfront which will seek an unspecified level of LEED certification. The club intends to contribute $150 million to the project, which will also include the 85-acre transformation of Tropicana Field and its adjacent parking lot into a LEED-certified mixed-use residential and retail community that the Rays will develop in collaboration with Hines. The new stadium will feature an innovative retractable roof (open-air stadiums can be problematic in South Florida during the humid and rainy summer months of the baseball season). The Rays have also hired climatologists to assist the design team in determining how to keep the park cool. The club is seeking public funding for the project- approximately $60 million in sales tax rebates- so local voters would have to approve the financing. The Rays hope to open the stadium by 2012- check out the renderings from MLB.com below.

• Tampa Bay Rays Finally Unveil New Ballpark Plans (WMNF via SS)
• Rays Announce Plan for New Waterfront Ballpark (Action News)
• Ballpark Renderings (MLB.com)

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