I was curious… I don’t pretend to know all that much about the subject but why couldn’t the empty lot next to Raymond James, where the old Bucs stadium was, be the site of a new stadium for the Devil Rays. Another possibility would be off I-75 to the east, south of SR-60 (adamo drive). This would be easily accessible with both I-75 and 301 nearby. However, anyone who thinks that the team would not benefit from moving to Tampa is off their rocker. How could St. Pete and Clearwater, older transient communities, compete with the communities of Carrollwood, New Tampa, Wesley Chapel, Brandon, Valrico, and Riverview, all of which are middle class vibrant communities in addition to the larger metropolitan city of TAMPA. Additionally in response to a few previous posts:

1. It shouldn’t matter if they are good or not, if you are a fan then you will go. The Cubs stink and have stunk for the better part of a century. Yet you hardly ever see a game at the dilapidated Wrigley Field under half full. I only get the opportunity to see the D-Rays when I come home from school and I ALWAYS make it out to at least 1 game a week. If you are a fan surely you could make more of an attempt than a college student.
2. There also were some arguments about population and traffic. Pinellas County maybe one of the most densely populated, however that is a transient population AKA not fans of the D-Rays. The reason why there is no traffic is because no one lives there in the summer, they all retreat to New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania etc. Just look at the license plates.
3. There were also arguments made about attendance to Hillsborough arenas with the Lightning and Storm. My question is this, What was the price hike when these teams moved to a new stadium, could this have anything to do with an attendance drop-off? MAYBE

Sorry… not a sports fan.. I believe that the stadium should not be built with tax dollars..
not everyone that would be paying taxes are sports fans.. I also believe that anything built with tax dollars should have free admmission ,such as sports stadiums or theme parks (the aquarium)..
(lowery park) or (mosi) Im a non believer in paying over and over again ..

HireJeff is an obvious congenital idiot.  You can put up all the WORDS you want but it doesn’t make it true.  The Rays would DOUBLE their attendance if they moved to Tampa - absolutely no question.  How do I know this?  The answer again is obvious.  Because HireJeff (read IDIOT) says it wouldn’t happen.

real927 - 03 July 2007 10:48 PM

HireJeff is an obvious congenital idiot.  You can put up all the WORDS you want but it doesn’t make it true.  The Rays would DOUBLE their attendance if they moved to Tampa - absolutely no question.  How do I know this?  The answer again is obvious.  Because HireJeff (read IDIOT) says it wouldn’t happen.

*** I retired the HireJeff name, went for a more Florida-centric name. ***

Well, it can’t happen before 2027 (the lease with St. Pete includes provisions in the event the team leaves the Trop, they still can’t leave the city) ... so don’t lose any sleep over it. I won’t.

I guess I am just a little skeptical of all the anecdotal claims that simply playing in Tampa would double the attendance. I just don’t see anyone backing that up with anything of substance. If you could point at anything that shows a pent-up demand (even if the Tampa Yankees were simply drawing more fans than the Clearwater Threshers) but no one has. All the claims seem to be based purely on opinion.

Also, the contention by another poster that there are NO people in Pinellas in the summer is laughable. The population numbers everyone keeps talking about are census numbers, which count your primary residence. Pinellas doesn’t get to count the “seasonal” visitors as residents. (Your own point, “just look at the license plates” makes it clear they are not counted as residents!) The only thing I can think of that would cause someone to think this is the fact that traffic (outside of US 19) generally flows better in Pinellas, so it may seem like there are fewer people.

Finally, “real927” please remember that the Bucs struggled with attendance for many years in this market (even in the panacea that is Tampa). They couldn’t bring in more than 25,000 per game in a market where football is king.

If the Rays start winning, suddenly there will be no issues with where the stadium is located. Funny, people used to be able to find it when the Yankees came to town, but now that the Yankees are barely a decent team, suddenly the Howard Frankland is 100 miles long again.

I just think that this argument is kinda silly, it isn’t like the huge difference between the college stadiums in Tallahasse and Gainesville (with more than 9 million fans within 100 miles of Gaineville and just about a million in the same range of Tallahassee.) The driving difference between the exit off I275 at Dale Mabry and the I-375 exit for Tropicana Field is 20 minutes ... which is less than the time that you’ll be stuck in traffic on Dale Mabry if the stadium were there. (Now, if you are travelling the other direction, it is longer because of the airport/westshore/vetrans mess, but the return trip after a baseball game is usually going to be late enough that traffic on the return is less of an issue.)

The residents that only live there for a portion of the year are most likely not a fan of the Devil Rays, they are fans of the team from their hometown. Again if they are not permanent residents they should not be included in the census.
Pertaining to the lease, contracts are broken on a regular basis I really would not put stock in that to keep the team staying on that side of the bay.