Rays Ballpark was the name used in project documents for a ballpark in the current location of Al Lang Stadium on the Tampa Bay waterfront in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, proposed by the Tampa Bay Rays as a replacement for Tropicana Field.
The Rays had hoped to complete the park in time for the 2012 season, but the proposal did not garner enough public support, and the project was abandoned.
Design
The Tampa Bay Rays have been working with Populous (formerly HOK Sport) on a design for a possible future ballpark since at least the beginning of 2007. The main design point of the proposed stadium was the "Mast and Arch" retractable roof. Instead of a solid material sliding roof panel, the "roof" would have been a fabric covering stored inside the shade to the seating. It was to be deployed by a pulley system at the top of the mast in six to eight minutes. It would have looked like a sail raising on a boat in the bay, or a circus tent being torn away by a stiff wind. The retractable-roof design would have been unique in baseball, looking like no ballpark built in this century or last.
The concourses in the proposed ballpark were similar to those at Pittsburgh's PNC Park, whereas they would have been enclosed and air conditioned and fronted with glass on the field side, allowing fans waiting for concessions to view the field. As part of the new stadium, Bayshore Drive, which currently runs along the east side of Al Lang Field, was to be closed during gameday activities, and become part of the ballpark. The ballpark would have faced the opposite direction of Al Lang Field, with centerfield on the north. In this configuration, it would be possible to hit home runs into the waters of Tampa Bay beyond the right field wall, similar to how home runs can be hit into San Francisco Bay at AT&T Park. This configuration would also have placed most of the fans in the shade of the grandstand as the sun sank into the west on summer afternoons, mitigated heat issues in the open-air facility. The open access to Tampa Bay from right field would also have provided a cooling breeze.
The original designs for the stadium called for up to of Tampa Bay to be filled in. By the time the stadium proposal was first made public, the landfill was reduced to . In May 2008, the team revealed a new design calling for moving Bayshore Drive to a bridge structure, reducing the landfill requirement to .
The plan website mentions that the simple act of moving from a dome to an open-air stadium could reduce the team's carbon footprint by up to 70%. However, the ABC group analyzing stadium needs for the Rays have said that any new stadium must have a fully retractable roof.
Proposal
The design of the ballpark, as well as the redevelopment plan for Tropicana Field, was released on November 28, 2007.
On March 11, 2008, the Rays continued to move forward with plans for a downtown stadium by submitting a preliminary design consideration document to St. Petersburg officials. In addition, the organization announced that a detailed transportation and parking study had concluded that the Al Lang site in downtown St. Petersburg is well suited for the Rays' proposed waterfront ballpark.
Nearly 14,000 parking spaces that may be available for the majority of ballpark events were identified, a figure that does not include roughly 7,000 on-street parking spaces. Some of downtown's largest institutions have expressed an interest in working with the Rays to provide parking for ballpark patrons, including All Children's Hospital, Bayfront Medical Center, and the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.
Financing
Rays owner Stuart Sternberg was to contribute as much as $150 million or one third of the cost. The team had also planned to seek Florida's 30-year, $60 million sales tax rebate for new sports venues. They also planned to fund the new park through the sale of redevelopment rights to Tropicana Field and the new property taxes generated from that redevelopment were projected to generate $800 million in new revenue. However, on January 7, 2008, the Rays announced they would be "temporarily abandoning" plans for seeking the subsidy. Using public funds in Florida to build a stadium may have proved to be too difficult; the Florida Marlins failed several times to get the sales tax rebate in their efforts to build the Miami Ballpark, and the state government anticipated heavy shortfalls in fiscal year 2009. Gov. Charlie Crist had announced that he would be interested in doing whatever he could to help the project reach fruition.