February 10, 2010

Pinellas developer proposes landfill as Rays stadium site

The Tampa Bay Rays have a new stadium proposal, kinda. A Pinellas County developer says if he gets 247 acres of free land for a development project on an old landfill site known as Toytown, he'd be willing to consider putting a Rays stadium there. Or letting someone else build a Rays stadium there. Or something.

The site, near the St. Petersburg airport, is probably farther south than the Rays would prefer, but beggars can't be choosers, and it is closer to affluent Tampa than the team's current home in downtown St. Pete. It's also worth noting that previous ideas for the site focused around building public parks there, but I guess a baseball stadium is a lot like a public park, only with a much higher admission fee, and you have to sit still while other people do the playing.

Meanwhile, the Rays have found themselves in hot water over another issue: Their planned sale of naming rights to their spring-training stadium in Charlotte County to a mining company that the county has been suing over pollution violations for a decade. The county, which actually owns the stadium but gave up the naming rights to the Rays when they moved there last year, was scheduled to debate the naming-rights deal yesterday but pulled it off the agenda after the Rays requested more time to "gauge community sentiment." Read: hope like hell that either this blows over in a couple of weeks, or somebody else steps up to bid as much for naming rights.