Why not develop part of the current Trop parking lot to pay for renovations to the old dome? Wouldn’t it be nice to keep Al Lang Field but turn part of the site into a park where Saturday Morning Market could have a permanent home?
The field could be used for college and/or community teams, even Little League!
Click here to see an alternative view of what Al Lang could be!
To defend their plan, the Rays keep mentioning several cities that have recently built new baseball stadiums. However, none of them put a stadium in an a healthy, growing downtown neighborhood.
The Trop is downtown already!! Why not redevelop the existing site? Here is one of many different scenarios that could work:
- Buy the 2 warehouses on the West end of the current Trop site to square it off.
- Build vertical parking to the West of the Dome (Tampa Airport is spending $60M for a 5,700 space garage).
- Build a new stadium, with retractable roof at East end of site.
- Put a park-like shopping and restaurant plaza, spanning Booker Creek, between the parking garage and the new stadium.
In this scenario, people would have to pass through the “plaza” and would be more likely to drink, dine, or shop on their way to and from the game. A viable business neighborhood could be developed. It would link Midtown with Central.
This would be a better, far more economical use of the present, more accessible site. It would also help preserve our Waterfront Park areas, which we have been protecting for close to 100 years. And this is just one of many options that would be far better than what the Rays owners are suggesting.
Another, simpler, alternative would be to build structured parking to he West of the Dome and develop everything East of Booker Creek, without building a replacement stadium. The existing stadium could be updated to some extent.
One important note: We have recently learned that there may be extensive environmental mitigation required to use the Trop site for residential and, possibly, retail purposes. POWW is stil investigating this issue. For any Trop site alternative to be viable, the costs of mitigation must be assessed and any developer selected must be willing to pay these costs. The developers who have submitted bids for re-development of the entire site want the City to pay these unknown, and potentially, large costs.