“As we have made clear at every step of this process, a 2029 ballpark delivery would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone,” the Tampa Bay Rays wrote in this letter addressed to the Pinellas County Commissioners. The PDF of the letter was created at 11:36 AM on November 19, and was reportedly delivered to the commission at 11:52 AM.
That delivery came just 2 hours and 8 minutes before a meeting in which the commission was voting on an important supplemental bond resolution to move the proposed funding deal for a new stadium forward. After much discussion, the commission voted to delay a vote for four more weeks.
With that letter, the Rays may have scuttled the deal for a new stadium, either deliberately or accidentally, as explained below.
The first thing to note is that our article yesterday showed that the act of playing at Steinbrenner Field next year extends the current use agreement for the Trop by one year. Thus the Rays have themselves extended the time they have to play in the Trop until the end of the 2028 season.
The second thing to note is that under the signed agreement for the stadium, the Rays have agreed to absorb all cost overruns. However, their letter clearly states that having the new stadium ready for 2029 opening day “would result in significantly higher costs that we are not able to absorb alone.” That statement could be grounds to argue that the Rays have (in legal parlance) “repudiated an essential element of the contract.”
That is the very language that Ron Diner, a former Raymond James financial analyst, made in this blog post late Wednesday. A good discussion (with case law) written by a Miami law firm of what is called “anticipatory repudiation” can be found here.
The question becomes whether the city can legally authorize the sale the issuance of close to $300 million in stadium bonds (series A and B) while knowing that the Rays have already stated that they cannot fulfill the underlying agreement. The bond item is on the agenda for approval by the City Council tomorrow Thursday.
The letter was signed by Brian Auld and Matt Silverman, the co-presidents of the Rays, and neither are attorneys. It is not known if it was reviewed by legal counsel before being sent, and neither Auld nor Silverman are presently making public statements.
Neither the contents nor the timing of the letter was well received by any of the commissioners, including the three commissioners who voted in favor of advancing that same deal on July 30. Of the five who voted in favor in July, two are no longer on the commission.
Axios called the comments from the commissioners in response to the letter “scathing feedback” to the Rays organization. The headlines of many local media outlets either said the Rays are halting or suspending the stadium deal, whereas the headline in the ever establishment-friendly Tampa Bay Business Journal suggested that the county commission was to blame.
“We’re getting gaslighted as a commission by the Rays that ‘hey, we’re [the commission] the bad guys’” said District 3 Commissioner Vince Nowicki .
Nowicki, a staunch opponent to the current proposed stadium deal, also said that some of his colleagues were trying to make his election “a scapegoat of why we’re delaying this.”
Commissioner Kathleen Peters and René Flowers implied that if newly elected commissioners Vince Nowicki and Chris Scherer knew more about the deal, they might support it. However, they did not indicate that they were willing to be persuaded to vote no if more information reached them.
The unhappiness with the Rays actions include comments made Rays owner Stu Sternberg to Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano on Saturday that the Rays had “lost the county as a partner.” Sternberg tied this breakup to a three-week delay in funding approval by the Pinellas County Commission. Notably, Sternberg and the Rays have not complained about the additional four week delay that the county commission approve on Tuesday in a 6-1 vote.
In 2010 St. Petersburg passed an ordinance that made all panhandling a misdemeanor. That prohibition would necessarily include aggressive panhandling, which is “a habitual manipulative, coercive, or intimidatory use of another individual’s sympathy, fear, guilt, or insecurity for monetary gain.”
That description of aggressive panhandling accurately describes the behavior of the Rays over the last decade.
There were other statements in the Rays letter without legal implications that could be picked apart and contextualized, but they hardly matter any more. What matters now is what is going on behind the scenes. Whether Thursday’s bond issuance item on the city council agenda passes or is delayed will be a strong indication of the where things stand: deal, no deal or new deal?
Are intense behind-the-scenes actions being taken to negotiate an altogether new deal? One that people across the political spectrum won’t hate so much. Is the entire redevelopment deal falling apart, to be followed by lawsuits? Or is this all political kabuki theater with a predetermined outcome?
As always….the Guardian reports and the readers decide. Please like our Facebook page to find out when we publish new stories.
