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New Stadium in St. Petersburg?


tombarnes

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Does St. Petersburg Need a $450m Stadium?

Is it necessary to build a waterfront baseball stadium in St. Petersburg? While a new baseball stadium could be a catalyst for further development, I wonder whether it would be smart to do so. Handing out big sums of money to team owners is falling out of fashion, or so I had thought. What are your thoughts about the wisdom of doing this? It seems that the financing is hardly in place.

The Tampa Tribune

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How is it possible for these new stadiums to cost $450 million??? I mean how can it be that much???

You can build a 20 story high rise class A commercial building for about $100 million.

You're talking about concrete and plastic seats!!!!!

The only areas that are nice are the locker rooms, training areas, suites and to a lesser degree the press boxes.

I swear the rest has got to be slush money to the owners or the league's because it happens in every city.

It just seems crazy.

I wonder how much it would cost to build a stadium if people used their own money instead of public money all the time.

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Well, the increased cost of structural steel has been pushing construction costs skyward lately. I still wonder about a few of these big projects. One large hotel in Biloxi had $550m in renovations after Katrina. This was not too far off from the original construction cost of $780m. For a large stadium, $450m almost seems cheap. I still dislike the idea of huge public subsidies for these things, however. The argument can be made that such projects are incubators for related projects which can revive an entire area. Camden Yards in Baltimore and the new stadium in lower downtown Denver are two examples of successful stadium projects. I believe that public money was involved in both of those. For those two, though, I still see public money being shoveled into projects which could probably be built with private funding. What are your thoughts on the balance of benefits vs. public funding for this project?

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You'll all get to hear and see more details on the new ballpark and the proposed financing plan and redevelopment of Tropicana Field at 3:00pm on November 28th at Al Lang Field at Progress Energy Park. Expect Florida Governor Charlie Crist and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker to be in attendance for the announcement. Renderings will also be made public, so look for those. Expect to see a very retro-style park with the field re-oriented so that right field will be along the waterfront, very much like AT&T Park in San Francisco. Also, an optional sail-like roof is being considered.

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Well, the increased cost of structural steel has been pushing construction costs skyward lately. I still wonder about a few of these big projects. One large hotel in Biloxi had $550m in renovations after Katrina. This was not too far off from the original construction cost of $780m. For a large stadium, $450m almost seems cheap. I still dislike the idea of huge public subsidies for these things, however. The argument can be made that such projects are incubators for related projects which can revive an entire area. Camden Yards in Baltimore and the new stadium in lower downtown Denver are two examples of successful stadium projects. I believe that public money was involved in both of those. For those two, though, I still see public money being shoveled into projects which could probably be built with private funding. What are your thoughts on the balance of benefits vs. public funding for this project?
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  • 1 month later...

Those renderings are impressive. I still wonder if it will look as impressive in reality. In any event, I like the idea of a new stadium, but I still maintain that public funding for such a project ought to be limited. I assume that the funding picture hasn't changed?

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