Tampa Bay Rays new stadium problem, will it finally be solved?
Tampa Bay Times, a leading media outlet in the Tampa Bay region, said on the 19th (Korea Standard Time) that the race club plans to announce its plan to build a new stadium soon.
The Rays club also announced on the same day that it will make an official announcement a day later with its local governments, St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.
According to local media, they will announce plans to build a new stadium in their current hometown of St. Petersburg.
The stadium will be built as a closed dome stadium in consideration of the weather in the rainy Florida area. Construction will be carried out with a capacity of 30,000 seats with the aim of opening in 2028.
Currently, Tropicana Field, the home stadium, is on loan until 2027.
The new stadium will be built near Tropicana Field, which will be built as part of the city centre development plan.
Construction costs are expected to cost $1.2 billion and will be jointly covered by the Rays club, the city of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County.
Rays has not found investors at this point, but there are reportedly investors interested.
Tampa Bay has been pushing for the construction of a new stadium for more than a decade.
It even prepared a plan to dualize its hometown in conjunction with Montreal, Quebec, Canada, but it was once canceled due to lack of approval from the Major League Secretariat.
The relocation to Tampa, a larger city in the same region, was also considered, but eventually chose to remain in the current hometown of St. Petersburg.