Tampa City Council Member Bill Carlson and Rays CEO Ken Babby put a new Tampa-side stadium financing proposal into public view Wednesday, setting up another round of negotiations before any agreement can secure the four City Council votes required for approval.
The structure Carlson described on Garrett Greco’s Tampa Bay Developer podcast would change the treatment of Tampa’s proposed $80 million participation, create a separate tax increment financing district around the roughly 130-acre Rays development and redirect redevelopment tax revenue elsewhere in Tampa. Final tax-allocation percentages, development requirements and a repayment schedule have not been disclosed. Carlson said the new structure removes his principal objection to the May framework, although his vote will depend on the terms of the definitive agreements.
“The things that I didn’t like, especially using the city money, have been taken out of it,” Carlson told TBBW.
TBBW spoke with council members Lynn Hurtak, Alan Clendenin and Luis Viera after the podcast. Hurtak continues to question the city’s financial participation, while Clendenin supported the project under the May framework and remains prepared to vote for it under Carlson’s alternative. Viera welcomed the movement in negotiations, said council needs to pass a positive plan and pointed to Carlson’s Downtown Community Redevelopment Area proposal as an idea he found encouraging.
“What would the source of that money be? That’s what I want to know,” Hurtak told TBBW. “I don’t have $20 million. I can’t find $20 million. That’s the big crux of it all.”
“For the investment the city was looking at in the original MOU, it was still a great deal for the city of Tampa,” Clendenin told TBBW. Carlson’s proposal, he said, is “a different type of vehicle. It’s a different type of mechanism. It’s a different type of reimbursable agreement. But in the end it reaches the same goal.”
“Whether it’s a slight upgrade, and we are turning an Outback into a Longhorn Steakhouse, or something radically different, we should all be encouraged by the movement,” Viera told TBBW. “We need to get a positive plan passed. I am encouraged by talks of innovative incentive ideas like a cap on the downtown CRA.”
The May memorandum of understanding contemplated as much as $80 million of Tampa Community Investment Tax revenue for public improvements serving the $2.3 billion ballpark project. The MOU did not require that money to be repaid. Carlson’s proposal would replace that contribution with four $20 million advances that he says would be repaid from the CDD’s share of property-tax growth within the new district.
“They’ve asked for annual payments of $20 million,” Carlson said on the podcast. “That would be an advance on the tax revenue-sharing stream, the property-tax stream. And so through the city we’ll do that, we’ll do PayGo. And then they will pay us back out of the CDD portion.”
Hurtak pointed instead to Ybor Harbor and Gasworx. “But that money is only available to them after they’ve completed the work. It’s a reimbursement grant,” Hurtak said. “I have no problem working with infrastructure paid after the fact because that could be considered a benefit to the community. But paying for it upfront is just not necessarily something that a government needs to be doing for the private sector.”
“It’s different from where the money comes from,” Hurtak said. “The amount of money going in is not different.”
The reimbursement would depend on property-tax growth inside a new tax increment financing district. “It will draw a boundary around the whole project, not just the ballpark,” Carlson said on the podcast. “The property taxes will be on the private sector buildings like the hotels and the office buildings and apartments, but also on the skyboxes and other private facilities inside the ballpark. And so all that money will go into the TIF and then it will be split three ways.”
Those shares would go to Tampa, Hillsborough County and a community development district, or CDD. Tampa’s portion would feed a proposed citywide infrastructure fund, while the CDD could use its share for publicly owned infrastructure inside the project and, according to Babby, potentially capital work at the county-owned stadium.
Hurtak said Babby did not have the allocation figures when she met with him the previous week. Without the CDD’s percentage, council members cannot calculate how much revenue would be available to reimburse Tampa or how long the city could wait to recover its advance.
“Are all of those TIF dollars going to pay off the loan?” Hurtak said. “And if not, what’s the percentage? What is the city getting back? What is the county getting back? How do we use that for infrastructure?”
Clendenin measures Tampa’s participation against what he believes the broader development could produce. “My position on this has always been one that, for the city of Tampa, this is an enormous win and that we could not have orchestrated something this significant for a de minimis amount of investment,” Clendenin said. He estimated the project could produce “$6 to $8 billion of construction” and “anywhere between $50 and $80 billion over 30 years” in economic impact.
Those estimates have not been independently established by TBBW. Clendenin instead pointed to what surrounds Hillsborough College today, describing a “sea of asphalt” and 40- and 50-year-old buildings.
“In the end it reaches the same goal,” Clendenin said, pointing to plans for a rebuilt college campus surrounded by sports and entertainment venues, hotels, restaurants and housing that could spur additional development in Drew Park.
Clendenin also pointed to transportation improvements and the college itself. “It’s recreating a college which was built as a two-year suburban drive-to school,” he said. “Now we’re going to create an urban-style campus for it, which is now a four-year school. So by hook or by crook, whichever way we go, as long as we get to a yes on this, I’m all in.”
Carlson’s repayment depends on tax growth from property that produces little or no property-tax revenue today. The May MOU left the required mixed-use development program and minimum completed valuation for the definitive agreements now being negotiated.
“I would invite listeners to go out and drive around the site of Hillsborough College right now,” Babby said on the Tampa Bay Developer podcast. “And while we’re thrilled to have a college in that space, we’re talking mostly about parking lots. We’re talking about a space that, within the boundaries of that district that’s shown up there, generates $0 in taxes today, like literally zero.”
The Rays have promoted an eventual $8 billion to $12 billion development around the ballpark, but Babby said the contractual requirement will be smaller. “You’ll see minimums that are less than that,” he said on the podcast.
Babby also described a construction schedule that would put the ballpark on a different timetable from much of the taxable development around it. “When you look at the site in 2029, when the ballpark opens, you’re going to have a brand new ballpark,” Babby said on the podcast. “You’ll have a rejuvenated new Hillsborough College and we’ll be just on the cusp of phase one of this development, with hotel and retail and mixed use and multifamily housing. All of that will be coming out of the ground and we hope for a portion of it completed as the ballpark opens.”
Tampa could therefore begin making its annual payments before much of the property expected to produce its reimbursement reaches the tax rolls.
Carlson said the mayor’s office is determining where Tampa would obtain the four proposed $20 million advances. He said the Rays have agreed that Tampa could recover any interest it incurs while providing the money.
“The city is going to get all that money back, plus interest if we have any interest,” Carlson told TBBW. The source of the advances, the repayment schedule and the provisions guaranteeing repayment have not been disclosed.
The stadium proposal also incorporates a Downtown CRA change Carlson has pursued for years. “For years, I’ve been trying to cut the Downtown CRA in half,” Carlson said on the Tampa Bay Developer podcast. “We move $20 or $30 million a year out. We put that into what I’m terribly calling an infrastructure trust fund.”
Under Carlson’s proposal, approximately half of the Downtown CRA revenue would remain available for downtown projects, while the other half would support roads, sidewalks, parks and flood-control work elsewhere in Tampa. Carlson said downtown would continue receiving more redevelopment revenue than any other district, while neighborhoods facing deteriorating roads and repeated flooding would gain another source of infrastructure funding.
He estimates the two sources could produce at least $1.5 billion over 35 years, although he described that figure as “back-of-the-napkin math.” Tampa’s share of the Rays TIF remains unknown.
Hurtak estimated that rewriting the Downtown CRA plan would take 18 to 24 months and said commitments already made for the Straz Center, Tampa Theatre, Tampa Museum of Art and the Tampa Convention Center would leave no money available for another year or two.
Carlson said the infrastructure fund would operate for as many as 30 years and would not depend on receiving Downtown CRA revenue immediately. He also said discussions with the county and the CRA attorney led him to believe Tampa could change the district’s boundary without rewriting its redevelopment plan. TBBW has not independently confirmed that interpretation.
Clendenin pointed to unfinished projects on Morgan, Marion and Franklin streets, redevelopment around publicly owned property and a potential streetcar expansion. “Downtown, people look at downtown and they look at the areas that have been redeveloped and think, ‘Oh, it’s done.’ It really isn’t,” Clendenin said. “There’s still a lot of things downtown that need to be done. I’m 50-50 on the Downtown CRA.”
Carlson also proposes removing the Rays development from the Drew Park CRA, placing the approximately 130-acre site within its own TIF and seeking as many as 30 additional years for the remaining Drew Park district.
The May framework contemplated up to $100.014 million in Drew Park CRA bonds backed by qualifying tax increment generated by the Rays development, with Rays payments covering shortfalls in scheduled debt service.
Hurtak said the Rays had assured her from the beginning that the project would not use Drew Park’s existing revenue. Carlson said a proposal still under discussion two weeks ago would have drawn tax increment from the CRA for eight years before replacing that funding with revenue from the new Rays district.
Carlson’s alternative would remove the development site from the Drew Park CRA, confine the stadium financing structure to revenue generated within the Rays property and allow the city to seek as many as 30 additional years for the remaining district.
“This restricts this project, carving this out and creating this TIF, and creates just that vehicle of money raised on that property to pay back for the project,” Clendenin said. “So somebody builds a hotel off property, that money’s not going to be used for on property.”
Carlson also wants the East Tampa CRA extended when the city and county reopen their redevelopment agreements. He acknowledged that East Tampa has no direct financial connection to the Rays project but said the broader negotiation creates an opportunity to secure additional years for the district.
Clendenin said the CRA extensions would take longer than the stadium financing documents. “The actual definitive documents creating this reimbursable funding mechanism, I think, could be done within the next couple of weeks,” he said.
Florida’s Government in the Sunshine Law prevents council members from privately deliberating among themselves over a matter expected to come before them. Babby said Carlson asked him to make another round of individual meetings with council members as negotiations move toward definitive agreements.
The Rays say government decisions are needed in August and construction must begin in September to preserve an April 2029 opening.
Carlson said Hillsborough College creates another deadline because the Rays have committed to pay for temporary facilities while the Dale Mabry campus is rebuilt, and a construction delay could push students’ planned January move into those facilities until June. Carlson wants draft documents released for public review and definitive agreements available, preferably at least 10 days before City Council votes.
“We’re still working out the numbers as we sit here today,” Babby said. “Those property taxes, the percentages, who pays you back, we’re still finalizing that.”