What’s The Latest On the Rays’ Ballpark Negotiations? Well, We Asked.

Tampa Bay Times; Published By: Colleen Wright & Jack Evans

Mayor Ken Welch’s announced pick to redevelop Tropicana Field came with fanfare, including a high school marching band blasting Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to be Real.”

Three months later: not one note. Just quiet, private meetings between city officials, the Tampa Bay Rays, and the team’s development partner, Hines. All with the hope of breaking through the 15-year stalemate in negotiations on building a new ballpark, and rebuilding on the 86 acres it sits upon.

That’s by design. All parties are talking and meeting regularly, according to interviews and public calendars. But negotiators and the consultants and lawyers they’re working with have avoided putting anything in writing or sharing visuals such as charts, graphs, and renderings to avoid making them public records.

“Is a legal document, not attorney-client privileged?” wrote Inner Circle Sports consultant David Abrams to St. Petersburg City Administrator Rob Gerdes on Feb. 6. “One method of keeping this out of the public domain until we are done is having external counsel work on it and making it privileged.”

That email, along with typed texts and screenshots of texts that coordinate phone calls and Zoom meetings, are all that come up in public records requests for correspondence between city officials, their consultant, and the Rays’ front office dating back to February. Read more