Atlanta Braves Seem Content to Wait Out Politics for New Spring Home

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Apr 7, 2015; St. Petersburg, FL, USA; General view of Tropicana Field before the start of the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Baltimore Orioles . Mandatory Credit: Jonathan Dyer-USA TODAY Sports /

Tortoise-like Progress

On January 14th, the new St. Pete City Council held a new vote on the Rays, this time approving a measure by a 5-3 margin that would allow them to look for a new stadium site in either Pinellas or adjacent Hillsborough counties. Hillsborough is the parent county of the city of Tampa. Part of the approved deal was that if the Rays moved to Tampa, there would be a modest penalty of $24 million paid to St. Petersburg and give up any rights to the site of Tropicana Field.

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Okay, now what?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly clear the way for Gary Sheffield and his investment group. There are probably three (+/-) groups/ideas now getting started to figure out what to do for the Rays:

Group 1: Move them to Tampa, probably near the Bay.
Group 2: Raze the Trop and build a new stadium in its place. This, on its face, seems like a stupid idea for multiple reasons.
Group 3: The same story from above suggests that the Toytown landfill site itself would be a decent Pinellas County location for a new ballpark.

Unfortunately for Sheffield and the Braves… #3 is probably correct. It’s a much more accessible site than Tropicana Field is. Certainly Pinellas County could get behind that, too.

There’s Another Development

Late last week, Pinellas County and SportsPark Partners LLC met in Florida to discuss the Sheffield/Toytown proposal in further detail. This would seem to signal a willingness to inch forward with that group’s plans.

Except that no one representing the interests of the Atlanta Braves attended the meeting.

It was as if there was a large empty chair in the room. Pinellas County noticed. TampaBay.com noticed. BallparkDigest noticed.

Have the Braves walked away from this opportunity? Joe Lauro, director of purchasing for Pinellas County, was quoted as saying “I honestly don’t know.”

The TampaBay.com story notes that the request of monies from the County to support SportsPark Partners might put a “serious, perhaps fatal dent” into efforts to keep the Rays on the St. Pete side of the Bay. If the Braves got that money, then the Rays would not.

That is likely why Major League Baseball jumped in last Fall:

"Major League Baseball quickly issued a statement last year basically telling the Braves to back off while the Rays tried to reach a deal with the St. Petersburg City Council to look outside the city for a new stadium site."

At this point, the St. Pete City Council has given its blessing. The Pinellas County Commission is now moving – slowly – forward. But the Rays’ new homesite is still up in the air… and could involve that same Toytown landfill site.

TampaBay.com asked the Braves for comment – they opted to decline the request. The County thinks they might be able to find funding for both the Rays and Braves, though admitting “It would be tight”.

Back to Disney?

The Braves lease at Disney World is not done until after 2017. It also appears that Disney World itself is readying to proceed without baseball in its sports complex.

However, the Braves have no place to go yet. Even if the Sheffield proposal goes through, it could take six months before negotiations with the County are done, then maybe another six months before construction could begin… and that’s if the Rays cooperate – for they seem to (rightly) have first dibs in all matters here: politically, monetarily, and with MLB. And the St. Pete City Council gave the Rays up to 3 years to find a new home under the approved deal.

So even under the best case scenario, I cannot imagine that a new Braves Spring facility could be ready to go until 2019 at this point. But starting over elsewhere isn’t viable either, so Atlanta will likely have to go year-to-year with Disney for a while… with increasingly inconvenient Spring travel options.

Next: 5 Brave Questions for THIS Spring

Worse case scenario? Toytown doesn’t happen at all.

I don’t know that the Braves are ‘out’ for St. Pete yet… but it’s getting late in the game and Sheffield’s SportsPark group is behind.

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