City councilors vote to support Rays stadium package

Good evening and welcome tonight. I'm Mark Wilson. And I'm Allie Corey. We are back in studio with you this six o'clock, a day after a devastating defeat in the World Series. There is some good news for Rays fans. A little bit, yeah. Tampa City Council has supported a critical community benefits package. That's what they call it. That's required for the new stadium project or ballpark that would be built in Tampa for it to move forward. Let's bring in Fox 13's Evan Axelbank live from City Hall with the latest on this. Hi there, Evan. So what does this mean? Well, the vote when it comes to stadium issues here at City Council was close as usual, and we also got a big update from Hillsborough College on what their plans are going to be for the site that they currently occupy. The 4-3 vote approved a community benefit agreement that will provide $60 million to the city and county over the next 35 years. Now to the city itself, the Rays are pledging $21 million over just the next five years. It's going to go towards affordable housing. Business opportunities for women and minorities and also jobs training. There are going to be improvements to Al Lopez Park, anti-housing displacement programs for people already living in the neighborhood, and then support for the West Tampa Little League. Those against the project say that it's not enough money, but those for it point out that the Rays will have to give annual reports on the tangible impacts of their benefits package. The Community Benefits Agreement is about community buy-in to this. It's about community buy-in and it's not about some list of, hey, we're gonna give East Tampa this, North Tampa this. No, it's not. It's about things that are narrowly tailored to the deficits that communities have that go to the stadium, right? And that's what this is. I think it's very reasonable. We're not getting paid with anybody else's money, but the taxpayers own money going back So let's make it clear that this is not the raised money. It's the money that they're collecting from the taxpayers that they're formulating a way of giving something back at some percent, which is very small. Let's show you this too. The president of Hillsborough College showed off some new renderings and gave us a hint as to what's going to be next at the site. The plan is to utilize 65,000 square feet at the current campus during construction of the ballpark. They're also going to use 19,000 square feet at the USF building here downtown. And they're also going to use 150,000 square feet of space on a property that is at the intersection of Himes and MLK. I should say that USF site is the one. That is on Franklin Street. There's also going to be a shuttle service that is going to be linking all of those facilities. The plan is for construction of their new buildings to begin in 2028 and then complete it at Hillsborough College in 2030. Now, the county still has several more votes to go before this deal is official. They have to vote on several things, including the CIT sales tax money and the bonds. themselves. The question is going to be when is groundbreaking? Well, the mayor of Tampa told us last week that she's hoping by the end of November. So everybody's waiting for that now. But another important step today, Mark. Yeah, because if you're talking opening day, April twenty twenty nine, I mean, you're barely over two years into construction. Can they build a stadium that quickly? Well, I haven't built a stadium, Mark, but the people who build them say that they can do it. And the people who are behind the stadium have built many stadiums before, so we have to take them at their word. The county is going to want to be watching every step of the project along the way, just given their enormous investment in all of this from the county's perspective. So they're going to be engineering this every step to make sure that they're going to be on time and on budget and also to see where their money is going to be going. We're going. I guess we're going to have to wait and see on if they can do it, but the people behind it say they can. Yeah, and to your point, they have, this construction group has done many, many of these before, so this will not be their first. All right, Evan Axel will make a live first tonight. Evan, thanks.