Unfortunately for our waterfront, the following IS drawn to scale:

"There's already a big baseball stadium there now, what's the big deal?"

As the picture above illustrates, Al Lang Field (which is indeed a large structure) pales in comparison to the gigantic 34,000-seat stadium the Rays want to build.  With the cover raised, the new ballpark would be nearly as tall as the 28-story Bank of America Tower, the tallest building in St. Pete.

Furthermore, the new stadium wouldn't even fit on the footprint of the Al Lang site.  Instead it would extend past Bayshore Drive and into the Bay, requiring a disruptive dredge and fill process.

The City and its citizens have spent years discussing what is appropriate for the downtown area in general and the waterfront in particular.  A building of the height and overall bulk of the proposed stadium is not at all consistent with Vision 20/20 (the masterplan for our downtown waterfront, developed with extensive community input over many years).

In fact, the City Council was ready to vote to protect the Al Lang site as parkland, per the results of an involved community feedback process, when City Development Administrator Rick Mussett sent them an urgent memo, urging them to delay the designation until a future date.  City Council was unaware that the Mayor and Mr. Mussett had been meeting in secret with the Rays about plans to build a new stadium on the Al Lang site.