With the official closing of the sale of Tampa Bay to a Jacksonville group led by developer Patrick Zalupski, let the chatter of a new Rays ballpark begin–but don’t expect anything soon.
Officially, the Zalupski group closed on the $1.7 billion purchase of the Rays and other assets yesterday afternoon. Zalupski is founder and CEO of Jacksonville-based home builder Dream Finders Homes, and group includes Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (Triple-A; International League) owner Ken Babby, Union Home Mortgage CEO Bill Cosgrove and former Orlando Dreamers investor Rick Workman. Current owner Stu Sternberg and his investors will retain a 10 percent share of the team as well.
Zalupski will serve as MLB Control Person and Co-Chair for the Tampa Bay Rays. Cosgrove will also serve as Co-Chair, while Babby is the Chief Executive Officer, and will oversee day-to-day business operations of the club.
“It’s an incredible honor to become the stewards of the Tampa Bay Rays, a franchise with a proud history and a bright future,” Zalupski said via press release. “We are especially privileged to have been chosen by Stu Sternberg as his successors, and we’re all energized by the responsibility to serve Rays fans everywhere and this great game.
“I want to sincerely thank Commissioner Rob Manfred and the entire Major League Baseball community for their trust and support throughout this process. We will work hard to earn the respect and confidence of our fans and new MLB partners, and we are excited about the upcoming challenge to deliver a world-class experience on and off the field.”
Zalupski and Cosgrove will establish an executive advisory board composed of select investors of the broader ownership group including Workman, Doug Hertz, Will Weatherford, Robert Skinner, Dan Doyle, Jr., and Matt Silverman. Fred Ridley will also serve as an independent member of the executive advisory board.
The purchase includes USL Championship’s Tampa Bay Rowdies, who currently play out of Al Lang Stadium in downtown St. Petersburg. With St. Petersburg officials convinced the waterfront Al Lang Stadium site is underutilized as a soccer facility and with no future foreseen as a spring-training site, a park anchored by an amphitheater is in the works–which could mean a new home for the Rowdies as well
As noted, the most intrigue surrounding the new owners will be a replacement for Tropicana Field and the generally weird nature of Florida politics, certainly distilled on the local level with Tampa, St. Petersburg, Pinellas County and Hillsborough County officials split on the location of a new Rays ballpark as well as how to fund it. Those issues may be mitigated somewhat how with Pinellas County seemingly backing off on a Rays ballpark and looking instead into putting hotel/motel taxes into an expanded Philadelphia Phillies spring-training complex in Clearwater.
And, as we’ve reported several times, Tampa is reemerging as a leader in landing a new Rays ballpark. The thought in MLB circles is that a more inviting climate-controlled ballpark in a better-situated location (i.e., Tampa and Hillsborough County instead of St. Pete and Pinellas County, with better access to the I-4 corridor and Orlando) will give the team a needed financial boost. Though real-estate pros are already talking about plenty of potential sites for a new ballpark in Hillsborough County (WestShore Plaza, the Florida State Fairgrounds, the former Tampa Greyhound track), we continue to hear the two leading contenders as of now are the Dale Mabry Campus of Hillsborough Community College–basically located south of Steinbrenner Field and west of Raymond James Stadium–and an Ybor City harborside location previously considered by Sternberg.
The economic model for a new Rays ballpark will be familiar to anyone tracking new MLB facilities over the last 25 years: build a new ballpark as well as associated development, with MLB teams increasingly becoming core parts of real-estate efforts. This would seem to be a strong argument for a Hillsborough Community College location: create an entertainment district that can also cater to fans attending games and concerts at Raymond James Stadium.
A press conference from the new owners is scheduled for next week.
Archival rendering of proposed Ybor City ballpark courtesy Tampa Bay Rays.
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