Remaining work on Rays ballpark deal won't include further financial concessions

NEW YORK — Taking a quick break from talks with Tampa and Hillsborough County officials to attend to the more fun part of the job — watching his majors-best team beat the Yankees on Friday — Rays CEO Ken Babby said there is still “a lot of work to be done” in finalizing agreements to fund construction of a new ballpark.

But he made clear that work would not include any substantial changes to the financial terms laid out in the nonbinding memorandum of understanding (MOU) that was approved this week by the governing bodies of both municipalities.

“Collectively we are not reopening a discussion on the economics in the MOU approved by the county commission and city council,” Babby told the Tampa Bay Times at Yankee Stadium. “We do recognize that there are many unresolved issues, and we will begin focusing on that this coming week.”

The current framework of the deal to build a $2.3 billion domed stadium on the site of the Hillsborough College campus across from Raymond James stadium calls for a $976 million public contribution, with $796 million from the county and roughly $180 million from the city.

The Rays will pay the remaining 55% of the stadium project, roughly $1.27 billion, plus any overruns, as well as maintenance. (The team in a separate deal will privately finance a surrounding mixed-used development it says will cost $8 billion to $10 billion.)

The numbers in the stadium deal, Babby said, “are what they are,” with the team unlikely to make further concessions or additional contributions.

“We’ve worked for six months to reach the framework, so when you bring it to the public body, that doesn’t open up the dynamic to renegotiate the framework,” Babby said. “But we’ve acknowledged that there’s definitive issues that still need to be resolved — definitive, important issues that need to be resolved — before we come back for final votes."

Babby declined to identify the specific issues that will be targeted for discussion and made only a veiled reference to where/how compromise can be reached.

“The remaining definitive issues have economic cost to them, so I think that’s where our focus will lie,” he said.

What that likely won’t include, he said, is the team further increasing its share of the project cost, having already done so when reducing its original request for public funding from $1.065 billion.

“The county and city really pushed hard on us and continued to push to make the deal a better deal for the public, and they did that. And they continue to push hard,” Babby said. “I think we’ve given a lot. We continue to take on more and more, and we believe this is a fair framework.”

Some changes to the team’s funding plan, he said, involved Community Investment Tax dollars, which he said were “substantially” reduced during negotiations.

“The Rays have continued to move in a number of ways,” he said. “For example, we started the conversation talking about bonding the CIT money. We faced resistance from both the county and city, and reluctantly moved to more of what’s called a ‘pay-go’ model, where the public funds are going to be paid to us over a window of time.

“The city then came back and said we want our CIT money going specifically into the infrastructure of the building, and we agreed to do that specifically to the city.”

Babby reiterated that the CIT funding component — which currently includes $80 million from the city and $360 million from the county — remains “a critical component” of the project.

Another example of the team making concessions, he said, is its increase in overall contribution.

“We’ve moved our investment from our ownership group now to north of $1.2 billion,” he said. “That number’s moved substantially as we’ve increased our investment, and I think that’s how the community needs to think about this project.

“It is an investment that the county is making, the city’s making, and the Rays are making. It’s going to generate $55 billion of impact and 11,900 jobs and, with the help of the state, rejuvenate a college.”

Babby said the goal is now to continue talks and draft “definitive documents” that will be voted on by the same county and city bodies as the final deal.

The team originally set a June 1 deadline, but with that seemingly unlikely to be met, he said the target is “as quickly as possible.”

The county on Wednesday approved the MOU 5-2. The city council was a tougher sell, with a 4-3 vote for it. And Bill Carlson said he only voted in favor to continue the discussion, but will be a “no” on the actual deal.

Babby said the ownership group, led by co-chairs Patrick Zalupski and Bill Cosgrove, understands the need for debate and discussion among stewards of public funding.

“It’s all part of the process,” he said. “I think elected officials have a responsibility to ask tough questions. We encourage that. Ultimately it’s our job, it’s the Rays’ job, to strike the right public-private partnership that gives them a deal that they can move forward. We believe that we have a framework to do that, and are going to continue to work with the county and city to move that into definitive documents.”

Babby said the MOU approvals, coupled with Hillsborough College officials agreeing to a lease for the stadium site, was “an enormous momentum step in moving this project forward.”

Despite the opposition and remaining issues to address, Babby said they still believe a deal can, and will, be made.

“I think we heard in both meetings that we still have some work to do to resolve issues, and that’s expected in a project like this, in a project of this size,” he said. “I think we also heard that there’s a resounding interest in the community to move this project forward, even beyond the elected officials — public comment at both meetings was resoundingly positive. …

“When you’re at sea, sometimes the waves are high, and the wind is hard and fast, but we believe the ship will come in. We still feel confident, but we still have a lot to do to get this finished. And I think all sides are really working in good faith to make that happen.”

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