ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — They are in charge of a city’s future, a chore as inscrutable as it sounds.
Documents, lawyers and polls, they have. Absolute certainty, they do not. How do you predict the next week, let alone the next decade? Who do you turn to for help? Where, exactly, does one find answers about the future?
Strangely enough, perhaps in the past.
The St. Pete City Council is scheduled to decide Thursday on a proposed $6.5 billion redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District that includes a new baseball stadium for the Rays. It’s as monumental a decision as any local council has made since …
The last time the St. Pete City Council approved a Rays stadium deal.
The circumstances were different, but the stakes were just as high. Back in 1986, St. Pete was the civic manifestation of an inferiority complex, except with beaches. Local leaders made a seemingly unhinged decision to build a domed stadium despite having neither a team, a viable ownership group, nor a plausible downtown.
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“I look at the council today, and their decision seems so much easier than the decision we had because they’ve already got a team, they’ve got an owner that’s going to pay over 50 percent of the stadium costs, and the city’s share is down around 25 percent,” said Bill Bond, who was one of the council members who approved the construction of Tropicana Field by a 6-3 vote in 1986. “I know the current group is agonizing over this, but this deal is far better than what we had to go through.
“All we had was a great belief in the future of St. Petersburg and our gut instincts.”
