After being grilled at City Hall, are Rays closer to getting a stadium?

ST. PETERSBURG — Well, that was refreshing. If it’s possible to describe eight mind-numbing hours of picking apart a 184-page document as refreshing.

While St. Pete City Council members had pointed questions about the details of the proposed agreement for a new baseball stadium and redevelopment of the Tropicana Field site, no one attacked it as a nonsensical corporate giveaway.

Doesn’t mean every council member is on board. Surely, some are not.

And it doesn’t mean there aren’t good-faith arguments about the wisdom of spending public dollars for sports stadiums. Surely, that’s a legitimate concern.

But there was no knee-jerk criticism. No grandstanding. And no suggestion that this isn’t a potential game changer for the city and the residents of the Historic Gas Plant District.

Instead, there were thoughtful questions about how much affordable housing is guaranteed in writing, what guardrails exist to keep the current Rays/Hines configuration involved and who gets to decide how to divvy up the most valuable parcels on the property.

Some questions were answered satisfactorily, and others caused city administrators to squirm. But there was no smoking gun that might fundamentally change a deal that has been in the works for months with city staff and outside counsel.

“We’ll very quickly get together with city staff to review today’s input and make any final adjustments to the agreement,” Rays president Matt Silverman said after the meeting.

It has taken more than a decade for the conversation to reach this point. Along the way, we’ve argued about a waterfront stadium in St. Pete, about whether the Rays would be allowed to talk to Tampa officials, about a stadium in Ybor City, about a split-season plan with Montreal and about who should redevelop the Trop site.

Now that those debates have been put to rest, all that remains are the details.

And the handful of outsized voices claiming the Rays have taken advantage of the rubes at City Hall.

In his opening remarks, team president Brian Auld alluded to those who assume a partnership that benefits the Rays must therefore be a bad deal for the city. Auld called it “simplistic, cynical and counterproductive” to dismiss the potential of a public/private partnership because of an erroneous premise.

Now, have the Rays negotiated to get the best deal they can? Of course they have. And some of the points raised by council member Richie Floyd and others on Thursday reflected that.

There seems to be some wiggle room when it comes to “minimum” responsibilities and “target” aspirations that might need to be tightened up. There are also stipulations for “excusable delays” for the developers that do not seem to extend to the city. Perhaps most striking Is the possibility that Hines could allow another developer to take over the project when one of the biggest selling points is that Hines is such a global giant.

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“If they’re willing to work with administration to address a lot of the issues, then I don’t see why it couldn’t (be resolved),” said council member Lisset Hanewicz, who said there were major risks with the document as written. “I only get the final product. I can tell them, ‘Look these are the problems I see,’ and then it’s up to them to hash it out. I would hope that I gave them enough food for thought today that need to be addressed that are important.”

The Rays have a huge incentive to get this deal done. They are hoping to get $600 million in public funds from the city and Pinellas County to help build a $1.3 billion stadium, and they are sharing in the profits of the surrounding redevelopment.

So ask yourself this:

If the city council is still pushing for more green space, day care, grocery stores, affordable housing and recognition of a long-ago razed neighborhood from an incentivized partnership group, how many of those amenities will the city get if they simply leave the redevelopment to free market forces?

Do you suppose credible developers are going to make room for trees, museums and workforce housing out of the kindness of their hearts? Yes, the city is investing in a baseball stadium, but it is also investing in itself.

“This can be ridiculously impactful,” council vice chair Copley Gerdes said. “We cannot overlook how important that job creation is.”

There’s another council workshop to be scheduled on the stadium issue itself. And Pinellas County must approve its portion of the project.

Still, from the tone of most council members, it would appear the Rays are going to have enough votes for city approval barring a late collapse.

“After hearing council’s opinions and suggestions for the development plan, we are even more excited about this project and its prospects,” Silverman said. “While there’s still more work to do, the finish line is clearly in sight.”

John Romano can be reached at jromano@tampabay.com. Follow @romano_tbtimes.

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