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MLB WINTER MEETINGSDecember 11, 2018Stuart SternbergBrian AuldLas Vegas, Nevada STUART STERNBERG: Before I say anything, we had some terrible news last night for baseball and for the Rays family in particular. Jim Hoff, who has been a field coordinator and, amongst other things, with us for probably about 17 years and has been in baseball for more than 50 years, an incredible guy in professional baseball, really wouldn't find a nicer fellow. We've spent -- I see him every Spring Training, and anybody who is around Jim, number of you in the room, if you've ever come across him, I'm sure you have, respected and really beloved by everybody, who met everybody -- everybody he met, he treated with respect. And our hearts go out to his family, friends and everyone who cared for him and those who know him. It's really going to be a loss for us, for Major League Baseball. Hoffy was an incredible fellow, and we're dealing with that as an organization right now. Thanks for listening in on this today. Commissioner Manfred sent out a letter this morning, and I just want to get Rays' thoughts out on this right now as we had seen the letter. In December of 2015, we collaborated with the City of St. Petersburg on an agreement to allow us to explore ballpark sites throughout the Tampa Bay region. That agreement provided a very generous three-year window. It was a very important step in our long-standing pursuit of a new home for the Rays, something we've been trying to do for over 10 years. And I have started -- I took over the team in 2005, and it really was one of our main initiatives from the beginning. Unfortunately, that window was closing without us achieving that goal. While momentum and progress are real, we're not close at all to a workable framework. As Commissioner Manfred noted in his response to Hillsborough County, fundamental issues have yet to be adequately addressed. These include, among other things, site control, political approvals, private investor commitments, cost and timing and timing certainty. We spent thousands of hours and many millions of dollars to make our vision of the ballpark a reality, a ballpark that would bring the excitement of Major League Baseball and stimulate an energetic and engaged community in the city and surrounding area. The result certainly wasn't due to lack of effort by any of the parties involved. And while I'm widely disappointed by the result, I'm not discouraged. Government officials as well as business and community leaders across Tampa Bay came together, particularly Chuck Sykes, Ron and their 2020 coalition, I want to thank everybody that's been a part of this project, especially the Ybor community who welcomed us with open arms. I want to also thank our partners in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, particularly Mayor Kriseman, for their support as we considered locations these past three years across Tampa Bay. I'm firmly committed to helping the Rays remain and thrive in Tampa Bay for decades and generations to come. Major League Baseball is a large part of what defines Tampa Bay as a Major League region, and I continue to be enthusiastic about finding a way forward. This is not the announcement I expected to make. It's very promising time for our franchise. I believe the Rays fans and supporters are very proud of their team and organization. We're fresh off a 90-win season, a quite improbable 90-win season, as many of you might have expected before last year, and I'm extraordinarily excited for the start of the 2019 season and very optimistic for what the years ahead will bring. What we try to do is make magic with Rays baseball and engage the community, and we're going to continue to do that on a day-to-day basis. Q. Stu, first of all, are you saying that the Ybor project is now dead? Because you spoke of it in the past tense. What's the next step? STUART STERNBERG: The state of things right now -- this phase of things right now is -- you want to use the term "dead"; I wouldn't term it in that fashion. We're going to put everything on the table going forward and look at every option available going forward, tomorrow. Q. In Tampa still? STUART STERNBERG: Coming into the -- coming into the year, once the MOU was open after the three years we've had, we won't have the opportunity to engage with Tampa unless certain things go on. Q. Just to be clear about this, since this obviously has all gone on behind the scenes, just get technically into why the project didn't move forward in the shape that you guys had hoped it would. And if you don't have -- outside create a new window to look elsewhere in the area, essentially you're back in the position where you're in the dome until 2030, right? STUART STERNBERG: 2027 is the final season. Nine more seasons there. Yeah, look, as I said, thousands of hours produced a lot of technicalities in all this. There was a letter, which is -- the main reason we're addressing this today, there was a letter that was written to me, myself, to the Commissioner, Commissioner Manfred, and Commissioner Manfred was mentioned last week, and he addressed some of the specifics as they were -- with respect to the letter. A project like this obviously has enormous amount of moving pieces to them, and certain thresholds have to be crossed in order to get to the point where you can really start to focus on the smaller items. We have not -- together with Hillsborough County, we've not gotten over that threshold enough, considering we had a three-year window to do this, and the window is coming to a close in just a few short weeks. Q. So you said you're committed to keeping the team in the Tampa Bay area for the long term, but you get to 2027, and then you have the opportunity to go elsewhere. What do you think is the reality, as long as you worked on the stadium situation? STUART STERNBERG: Right now, we've put all the energy and focus into getting the stadium done. We know and we believed it was something that could have done wonders for Ybor. Move a Major League Baseball team in an area, as we've seen in places like Washington and Colorado and San Diego, baseball people, we obviously know what goes on, and you talk to individuals in any of those cities. So we have a vision for what that can do and what it would do specifically for Ybor and as a whole for Tampa Bay. We don't have necessarily plan B right now. We tried with this sincerity back in 2008. We've done it now over the past three years. Using a baseball term, you could say we've had two strikes. We've got two strikes right now. But we're committed to getting at it, and we'll regroup right now, go back to the drawing board and, I would imagine, come the new year, try to figure things out. We're a pretty resourceful group and determined group, and we'll try to use all those powers we have and all the intuition and everything else you might think of to get something done in Tampa Bay. The important thing is that I am convinced and still am convinced that it could be a great thing for the area, and I'm committed to getting something done. But obviously I can't do this alone. It's going to be a group of people on whichever side of the bay and the whole reason to get it done. Q. Do you get the sense there would be a political climate to create another window similar to the three-year one you just enjoyed to look around Tampa and Hillsborough, or do you think that's slammed shut, or will that ever pop open again? STUART STERNBERG: I never like to think of never as an answer if it makes sense. But the nice thing is Mayor Kriseman in his leadership of the city council permitted this to happen because they saw the importance and they know the importance of baseball they have in their midst. They'd love to have it in St. Petersburg, and Pinellas County has been supportive of that, they've been on the record for that. But having said that, they've been focused on making sure the team had the best opportunity to stay here. So we don't shut anything off, and wherever it happens, the political will, I think, will -- has been good to this point, and I would like to think it would continue, because we've had good partners on both sides. Q. To clarify, you don't see any merit at this point to ask for an extension on this current window? You don't plan to do that? STUART STERNBERG: No. Something we could develop, it could be a new window or whatever you want to call it. Haven't even thought past where we are right now. We've had a long time. Three years is a long time. The runup, two to three years, getting there, it was a lot of discussion that went into that. Sort of the bell rang in January of 2016 -- 2015. And we just have not made enough progress to this point to be able to -- we asked for an extension, and, quite frankly, St. Petersburg has waited a long time for this and been very open and patient about it, but we'll see what the future brings, whether it's days, months, or weeks ahead. Q. In the past, indications have been that rebuilding in St. Petersburg would not be an appealing option -- or building a new stadium in St. Petersburg. Would you now be more open to that than maybe you had been in the past, or another site in Pinellas County? STUART STERNBERG: What I've been clear about since the beginning was trying to find a pinpoint, perfect spot in Tampa Bay. The market itself is not one of the top markets in Major League Baseball or football or any of the other sports. And it's try to find the right spot. We believe we found the right spot. And we looked throughout a number of areas, whether it's Pinellas, St. Petersburg. Things change over time, and we'll explore whatever options are available to us. Q. Obviously this is a financial puzzle of what the team is going to be part of. You indicated at one point previously 150 million, and you said more than that. Based on what you learned of this process, what's the realistic number that the team can contribute to this stadium, wherever it gets built? STUART STERNBERG: I don't have an answer to that at this point. We haven't really flushed things out. Part of that is getting through the process, getting more of the interest and excitement, especially at the corporate level, the business level. We're looking at -- things happen in different markets. Things haven't been fully flushed out to this point. Expansion -- there was an award in Seattle recently for hockey, and season ticket commitments and all those things, we haven't had that happen here yet. Things happen in other areas where there's a football stadium going on over here, and I can't say I know many of the specifics, but the naming rights and corporate partners have committed to things. The 2020 group, Chuck and Ron and everybody involved have done a great job trying to drum up support. Part of continuing that support is seeing what the plan looks like. We unveiled what we thought was an extraordinary stadium and extraordinary site, but I think if we had gotten further along with that, we would be able to answer that question better knowing what exactly was going to be involved to get this thing built. Q. 50/50 plan that was floated where they pay for 50 and you pay for 50 was not going to be feasible? STUART STERNBERG: I can make a case where -- it's not to sound flippant about it, where we really can't afford to put much of anything in it. I can make a case in certain markets you could fund an entire stadium, 50/50, 40/60, 30/70, these are numbers that go along. How the things get financed, ancillary development issues, market to market, there are just too many variables involved to just put a number on it right away. And I would love nothing more than to sit here and say we have enough season tickets sold, we have enough corporate support, we have enough with naming rights and cornerstone partners to say that we can do 70 percent or 30 percent or 50 percent, wherever that number lands at. But we don't have enough information to pass that along. Even if we were right now, the project hasn't moved along enough to be able to commit. We don't even know what the dollars look like relative to acquisition of the site, certain specifics that -- you refer to some of the technical aspects. Power station is nearby, other things that needed to get done to really fully understand the full costs of the stadium. Q. In your mind, if things get resolved, what is the earliest date a new facility is built? STUART STERNBERG: Great question. We planned this for a 2023 ballpark first pitch. It became clear to us with a number of the milestones not being hit a couple months ago that this was going to extend to the 2024 season. Each season moves along, things get more expensive. Other particulars come into play as well. So right now, if you snap your fingers and everything happened tomorrow, it would be 2024, and the clock is ticking on that. Q. You got an opportunity to take the temperature of the corporate community through this process. How confident are you that that sector will ultimately -- there will be enough support there to make the stadium happen for you, given that costs will continue to rise the longer it takes? STUART STERNBERG: That impacts what our contribution would be. So we have sort of a base-level understanding where we think it could be. It's along those lines right now, which is where we are, which informed a bit a couple of years ago when I considered what our contribution could be. Things have sort of picked up a little bit. The 2020 group had done some work. We put a little more pencil to paper, and we look at ourselves now a good deal north of where we thought we were a couple years ago. As that number changes or increases or season tickets, the corporate side of it, it will be in flux going forward. Interest rate environment has changed over the last couple of years. And the short-term rates have gone up a little bit, financing costs have changed. Q. Basically, if you look -- at every community is different, but the new ballpark in Arlington is over a billion dollars, when you're looking at the A's, they're talking about it as being part of a rebuild that includes the coliseum area. The football stadium in Englewood is being paid for a lot by ancillary building around it. It's over a $3 billion project. Is that the way you envision it? Because it doesn't seem like standalone ballparks can be built anymore at that price without having the business around it. I think maybe even Atlanta created that market with the new stadium there. STUART STERNBERG: It's certainly a large part. We're not landowners. We're not developers. We would certainly be open to using development type of funds to help fund a ballpark. Part of the process and plan that was in place here is to try to develop and put a district in place in Tampa Bay and take some of those tax revenues, the incremental tax revenues. Because it's an area, quite frankly, right now, there's not much there. It's not like we're taking an extraordinary number of existing businesses that are tax paying and turning it into a ballpark. Quite the opposite. It would be an area that's not paying any taxes, or very little at this point, and ideally build up all the area around it and use a lot of that funding to help craft a ballpark. The next level is obviously tickets and corporate support, and both of those things go a long way to getting it done. You're right. The cost of these things keep going up, and any of the ones you refer to, over a billion dollars and whatnot. Those were things that were planned a few years back. Every year the cost has been going up 47 percent. When we talk about the number we do, which we thought we were very judicious with, it was in 2023 type of dollars, not today dollars. If we had started this a number of years ago, it would have been less. We also need a roof. A number of the places don't necessarily need a new roof. But I can assure you when it gets done, and it will get done, it's going to be done in the most cost-effective manner possible. Q. Brian, where do you think you'll now look? You've had lists and sites proposed and suggestions. BRIAN AULD: We were certainly bound by the terms of our use agreement, but everything is back on the table. As we've been at this for over 10 years now, we'll continue to take the same approach we have over that time. As Stu referenced, we're a resourceful group. We'll get as creative as we possibly can, we'll work with all the partners we can to make this thing a reality. While today is certainly disappointing and represents a bit of a setback, we have great partners on both sides of the bay that have shown a willingness and eagerness to get this resolved. Both sides have a lot to gain from getting it resolved regardless of where the ultimate location is, and we'll lean on that to the degree that we can. But obviously we'll abide by the use agreement. Q. Stu, you alluded to what -- where you feel on this right now. Is there any scenario where you see the team not staying in the Tampa Bay area through the 2027 term at the Trop? And also does this imperil -- how much does this imperil the future of baseball long term in the Tampa Bay area? STUART STERNBERG: Look, I said initially when we first came in there was no way this team would be playing in 2027. I would say right now odds are we'll be playing closer to that date, if not to that date. But regardless of that, we will have to have it figured out where our next home will be. Ideally within Tampa Bay. I'm committed to doing it in Tampa Bay. But right now we're looking at 2024. It's not that far past that to get to '27. We've got a couple of years to figure that out. We've got to know where the 2028 season will definitively be played over the next few years. We had a long window to get to that point, meaning 15 years, and that's collapsed now. We've only got a few years left to really definitely get it done in Florida, a third strike. Q. Then you could start looking at other sites outside the area if you don't find a new solution. If in the next few years you don't find a solution, then you can start looking outside the area? STUART STERNBERG: We'll continue to look in Tampa Bay and we'll put our efforts to that. One way or another we need to figure out a where the team is going to be in 2028 if not sooner. Ideally sooner. But absolutely by 2028. We could be sitting here a few years and say, well, why don't you ask St. Pete for an extension for another year, like we're talking about. They've got to get on with their lives as well. Ideally, with Major League Baseball and Tampa Bay, there's 80 acres we're sitting on. The area has been bustling and moving along nicely, the mayor and city council, it's been a wonderful area. We've been supportive of the mayor and really proud to call it our home. But by the same token, I would imagine they want to start to figure out what development rights they need to do for their 80 acres. Right now we need them to support parking and other things we need to do for baseball. Q. Have you identified your funding source for the Ybor City site? Where is the public money coming from in that project? STUART STERNBERG: The funding source we can identify, Tampa Bay Rays. The funding source to the public side of it is up to the people, is up to the people that are public officials involved and have been involved right now. It's been indicated through the most recent letter that it's in the Tampa Sports Authority's domain to try to figure that out. Tampa and Hillsborough -- Hillsborough has worked for the past three years on that exact question. So it's probably best directed towards them. Q. Who exactly would be the partnership with? The county? Tampa Bay, the Authority? Who exactly is the public side of this? STUART STERNBERG: The contemplation would be with the county. With the county. Being facilitated by the Tampa Sports Authority and the City's involvement as well. Because all three of these, especially the City and County, are not just imperative, but it has to get done with both of them and their involvement. THE MODERATOR: Thank you. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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