John Romano: Best of luck to the Rays on the stadium idea. They're gonna need it.

TAMPA, Fla. — It was another time, another ownership group, another stadium location.

This was Ybor City in 2018, when the Rays unveiled an ambitious ballpark plan with a breathtaking design and a hefty price tag.

Standing on the porch of Hall of Famer Al Lopez’s childhood home, where the news conference had been held earlier, I discreetly asked a Rays official about the odds that the venture would be successful.

“What are the chances that it actually gets built?” I inquired. “Is it 50/50?”

“No,” came the reply. “More like 25/75 it’ll never happen.”

Five months later, the deal was dead.

Which brings us to today and the latest attempt to build a ballpark in Tampa. Hillsborough College officials rubber-stamped a nonbinding agreement Tuesday to use the bulk of the school’s 100-plus-acre campus to build a stadium and a mixed-use development surrounding it.

Back in 2018, the Rays never specifically said how much they would contribute to the estimated $950 million (with infrastructure) price tag in Ybor City, but it was less than 50%. That means they were looking for at least $500 million — and potentially more. Tampa and Hillsborough officials didn’t bite.

We don’t yet know the cost of the proposed Hillsborough stadium, but we can assume it will exceed the $1.3 billion for the abandoned Historic Gas Plant stadium project in St. Pete. And early indications suggest the Rays are looking for more than $1 billion in public contributions.

So … the team will be seeking significantly more money than in 2018, with the public possibly providing a greater percentage of the cost.

What do you suppose the odds are this time?

Money is not as easy to find in Tampa

The site, calendar and principals may have changed, but not the mathematics.

Getting a baseball stadium built on the Hillsborough side of the bay has been Tampa Bay’s version of the impossible dream. The Rays and their supporters have been endlessly circling sites and zip codes — Ybor, the ConAgra flour mill, The Heights, the fairgrounds, Jefferson High, the Tampa Greyhound Track, the Museum of Science and Industry, WestShore Plaza, the Tampa port near Channelside, Tampa Park Apartments, Rocky Point, Hillsborough College — with little to show for it.

Ask yourself this:

Why — when they have been so fixated on Tampa — did the Rays come close to rebuilding at the current Tropicana Field site, despite ample evidence that it wasn’t the ideal location for drawing fans? Because a huge plot of land was begging to be developed, the county had a vault filled with tourism dollars to offer and St. Pete was motivated to keep its signature franchise. It was far easier to get public subsidies in Pinellas County than in Hillsborough.

And that calculus has not changed in 2026.

Bob Buckhorn was Tampa’s mayor in 2018 and was adamant that the Rays pay for at least half the cost of the stadium. He also didn’t want existing tax dollars directed toward construction. The next mayoral election is a little more than 13 months away in Tampa, and, with Jane Castor stepping down due to term limits, Buckhorn is widely expected to run again.

Castor doesn’t seem interested in writing a big check on her way out of office, and Buckhorn will presumably continue to insist that the Rays pay for at least half of the stadium themselves.

Not to mention, the county just approved $250 million in improvements for Benchmark Arena for the Lightning, and the Bucs have long pondered the idea of a mixed-use development of their own that might aid in the cost of renovations at Raymond James Stadium.

So what’s to keep this baseball proposal from being a lost cause?

Just one thing:

The ability of Rays principal owner Patrick Zalupski and CEO Ken Babby to convince Tampa officials that a plan to build a massive entertainment district on the Hillsborough College site will eventually justify the cost of the stadium.

Actual info has been scarce

This time, the fancy rendering of a cutting-edge ballpark has not yet been released. There has been no word from the Rays on the potential cost, nor their proposed contribution. No public discussions about exactly how the city and county would recoup a $1 billion-plus investment in stadium construction.

The one thing the Rays have acknowledged is that the philosophy behind the proposal is similar to what the Braves did in Cobb County when they built a stadium around a mixed-use development in a suburb north of Atlanta.

And the Rays seem to be following the Braves’ strategy of keeping a tight lid on any and all information. At the time the Cobb County deal was announced, politicians in Atlanta and Fulton County were stunned that a deal had been brokered without their knowledge.

Rays owners, similarly, are operating on a need-to-know basis. They deflect or simply do not answer most questions about the effort. As a private corporation, that is certainly the team’s right and, likely, a wise way to do business. But the justification is not as clear-cut when public land and money are being sought.

So what might be happening behind the scenes?

Is it possible the Rays might seek a partnership with the Bucs in getting a massive facelift for that stretch of Dale Mabry Highway, while solving stadium issues for both teams? Sure, that could be in the works.

Is it possible the team is seeking a developer who might contribute to the cost of the stadium in exchange for tax breaks while recouping the investment once the revenues start flowing from the new construction? That was part of the discussion for the Ybor stadium deal in 2018.

Is it possible Zalupski’s relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis could add a heavy thumb to the scale? Absolutely. We already saw it when DeSantis paved the way for the Hillsborough College deal, and state Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, filed a request Monday for $50 million in funding for “improvement projects” for Hillsborough College, presumably to relocate campus buildings elsewhere on the property.

Considering how poorly negotiations have gone with Tampa and Hillsborough leaders in the past, it would make sense if this new version of Rays ownership had a radically different concept in terms of funding a potential stadium.

The idea that they’re already on the way to securing the Hillsborough College land is a pretty good indication that they’re out-of-the-box thinkers, and they may have similar innovative ideas when it comes to financing.

But, in the end, someone still needs to come up with a truckload of cash.

And it’s not unreasonable to wonder how much money the Zalupski group has available after the $1.7 billion purchase of the team just four months ago.

How real is the Orlando threat?

Historically, teams use the threat of relocation to goose local politicians into agreeing to stadium expenditures.

There are, however, some impediments to that strategy in Tampa Bay.

Other than the one-year, hurricane-related stay at Steinbrenner Field in 2025, the Rays have never called Tampa home. Will Hillsborough officials worry about being blamed for the Rays leaving, or could they rightfully claim this is a St. Pete and Pinellas failure? Will Tampa leaders have less motivation than politicians in other communities around the nation who might have blinked when faced with this type of threat?

Also, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred has been vocal about wanting the team to stay in central Florida, and specifically Tampa Bay. There has been almost no talk of the Rays bolting for Nashville or Charlotte or anywhere else ever since the Montreal split-season plan was shut down by MLB.

At this point, the most plausible threat is the possibility of loading up the U-Haul and moving 98 miles down the road from Tropicana Field to a site earmarked in Orlando for a potential stadium.

And — shocker! — talk of Orlando has ramped up recently, including a not-so-veiled inference from DeSantis.

So, how does this saga end?

There are too many options and too little information to make a prediction with any certainty.

Just know that the selection of the Hillsborough College campus as another potential stadium site should not necessarily be celebrated by Rays fans hoping for that “forever home” Babby keeps talking about.

Odds are, it isn’t going to happen.