Bradenton Herald - February 26,2008

Rays stadium plans in 'holding pattern'

ST. PETERSBURG --By ROGER MOONEY

While the Tampa Bay Rays are fully committed to their plans to build a $450-million state-of-the-art baseball stadium, team owner Stuart Sternberg said he might pull the plug on the project if it becomes too much of a financial burden to the club.

"I can't be full supportive until I see the numbers," Sternberg said Tuesday morning during a visit to the Rays spring training complex. "We don't know the answers to the numbers at this point."

Part of the deal hinges on the sale and redevelopment of the current Tropicana Field site. The team will pay $150 million toward the new stadium and expects to receive upwards of $700 million for the Tropicana Field property.

Should the Trop site not fetch that kind of money, the new stadium might be shelved.

"Sure," Sternberg said. "Heck, yeah. We're putting a lot in at this point, and I think if we went in and said, 'Oh, yeah, we're just going to write a $450 million check tomorrow,' there would still be a good deal of opposition, but people would feel differently about it. But it's nothing we can even come close to afford to do, so we've got to see what the numbers look like, most importantly for the tax rolls and how they're helpful for education and how it helps to finance a stadium and also what the plan would be for the development."

When asked for his "gut feeling" on the project, Sternberg said it was on a "holding pattern right now."

"The next (step) is really to see what's going to come back with the proposals (for the Trop) and see how the finances work, because everything we know is out there at this point," Sternberg said. "I can't, and I wouldn't say, this is going to be perfect. And I can't even say if I'm going to be fully supportive of it until we see what the finances look like when it comes back, but I have a very open mind and the organization does and I hope that all the citizens and politicians do as well. And I think we can all go into it and make a decision together. I would expect that it will work out financially for everything and people will see that it's a wise thing to do."

Sternberg said he doesn't think approval from voters is directly related to the Rays win-loss record this season.

"I know it's there," he said. "What I try to do and what I've instilled in the organization . . . is remove as many variables as I can from any equation. I said to them immediately, just take the stadium out of it because If you don't, you're just going to end up driving yourself crazy and what you start to do is to say, 'Were only trying to win for that reason' or, 'Lets try to win a few extra games to get some votes.' We just removed that immediately and we don't have to think about it.

"There are a lot of factors we can't control. Yes, we can help control the wins a little bit, but quite frankly is there a lot we can do to help us win a ton more games? If you win three or five more games is that going to make the difference at the voting booth? I doubt it. I would hope and I think that people see past that a little bit. I think if you win 53 games and were shedding payroll and were doing some bad things, that's a bad thing. But the economy is certainly an issue. How do people look at it? There's so many variables that I just try to remove as many as possible whenever I make a decision."

As for the Rays' rumored interest in Barry Bonds, Sternberg wouldn't comment directly on baseball's all-time home run king, but he did say: "When there's opportunity, nothing frightens me, and you deal with it as it comes around."