The Leading Candidate for a New Rays Stadium: HCC Dale Mabry

The Rays ownership group held a press conference on Tuesday, and surprised many of us by announcing they are seeking a minimum 100-acre site to build a stadium, embedded within a larger mixed use development.

One hundred acres is a lot.

Just by way of comparison, the Trop site — which by urban development standards is enormous — is about 80 acres. Atlanta’s Battery, the development that includes the Braves stadium, is 75 acres. Water Street, the Jeff Vinik development that includes Amalie Arena, Channelside, and what seems like many blocks of new development, is 50 acres. The entire Westshore Mall is a little over 50 acres.

And for anyone following the news closely and reading their tea leaves, the owners and Hillsborough County representatives have their eye on a centrally located site that just so happens to be 100 acres: the Dale Mabry campus of Hillsborough Community College, in the shadow of where the team played their 2025 season.

The land belongs to the county, and according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal it’s “controlled” by the HCC board of trustees, but we’re not sure what that means exactly.

Do the trustees have complete control over the site and are free to sell it? Or is that a county decision? We’re also not yet sure what processes are involved in selling this land, and whether it needs to be sold for appraised value or whether a lower land price could be part of the public funding needed to facilitate these wealthy new owners developing one of the cornerstone locations of Tampa Bay.

At any rate there are some clear plusses to this site:

Benefit 1 — Location!!!

HCC’s Dale Mabry campus is located across from Raymond James Stadium, which means there are opportunities to create a vibrant sports district that can benefit from synergies on parking, transit and commercial development.

Of course, RayJay and Steinbrenner Field (more on that) have been around for decades and we have seen none of that development emerge. That’s why, I believe, the current owners understand they have to control the development around the stadium as well as the stadium footprint itself, rather than building a stadium and hoping someone else develops around it.

Benefit 2 — Less negotiating

It’s all controlled by one owner, and that owner is a public entity, so there would be no drawn out acquisition negotiations with multiple owners.

Benefit 3 — LOCATION!!!

It’s very close to Tampa’s two main employment districts, downtown and Westshore, and not terribly far from the Frankland Bridge for those coming from the Pinellas side.

There are some pretty obvious problems, though.

Problem 1 — The College

There is, currently, a college there that serves thousands of students and employs hundreds of faculty and staff. Moving an entire college, with labs and dorms and athletic complexes, isn’t as easy as relocating a regular business. The site right now is very poorly used — the buildings are not very compact and the amount of surface parking is insane. So you wouldn’t need to find 100 acres as a replacement site, but you would still need at least 30 acres, unless you opted for a lot of tall buildings.

Personally I would love to see a conversation about co-locating the college with the stadium development. These could be very complementary, with maximum college use happening weekdays (although to be sure there are a lot of community college classes at night) and maximum baseball use on weekends and evenings. Build up — more density — instead of out — more sprawl and surface parking — and an HCC campus could be a great anchor for a commercial/residential district. Even so, there would be a ton of disruption during construction and a need for at least temporary relocations.

With the clock ticking on the Tropicana Field lease, Zalupski and co. are focused on moving ahead quickly. Surely finding/building an alternative site for a community college would slow things down.

Problem 3 — The New York Yankees

As always, the Yankees are a thorn in our side. The elephant in the room for discussing this location will forever be the Yankees Spring Training complex, which is directly next to this parcel.

Steinbrenner Field sits on county land, but the county can’t just evict them; there is a use agreement in effect that extends until 2046. Now, the HCC site alone has sufficient room to accommodate Zalupski’s development goals, but most Rays fans would agree that having a Yankees outpost taking up space on our turf is not a great idea. As part of any agreement, the Yankees would need to go (hey, I hear there is land available over in the Gas Plant area of St. Petersburg!). The question is, who is going to make them go?

If the new owners can answer that question, they might just unlock one of the biggest hurdles the Tampa Bay Rays have had for claiming this region for their own.