Ask most people in St. Petersburg what's happening at Tropicana Field and you'll get some version of the same answer: the Rays are getting a new stadium. That's been the shorthand for so long that it survived even after the deal it was based on collapsed. The plan the city actually picked in July doesn't have a ballpark in it at all.
That's not a footnote. It's the detail that separates what residents think they know about the Historic Gas Plant District from what the city has actually agreed to pursue, and it's worth sitting with before the next headline about "the Trop site" flies past your feed.
The stadium quietly left the request
For most of the last three years, this project and a new Rays stadium were the same conversation. In September 2023, the city, Pinellas County, the Rays and developer Hines signed on to a roughly $6.5 to $6.7 billion plan built around a new ballpark, with the Historic Gas Plant District redeveloping around it. Council approved financing pieces of that deal through 2024. Then Hurricane Milton tore the roof off Tropicana Field in October 2024, the Rays' new ownership missed key project milestones, and by early 2025 the whole agreement was dead.
When the city reopened the process, it changed the ask. The request for proposals that went out in late 2025 explicitly invited plans with and without a stadium, and by the time the field narrowed to four finalists in the spring of 2026, every single one of them reimagined the 86-acre site without a ballpark, according to WUSF's coverage of the April public forum. The team that ultimately won, Blake Investment Partners, built its winning bid around housing, parks, and a museum. Not a stadium.
The Rays are still contracted to play at Tropicana Field through at least the 2028 season, and the city just spent close to $60 million on repairs, including a new fiberglass roof membrane, so the stadium was ready in time for the 2026 season. But that repair is about keeping a lease obligation, not about the field's future. Team ownership has separately opened talks with Hillsborough County about a stadium near the Dale Mabry campus once the current lease runs out. Whatever comes next for the Rays, it's increasingly looking like it happens across the bay, not on this site.
A hometown bid beat out Wall Street money
The bid that won wasn't the flashiest name on the table. When the city solicited alternative proposals, one of the first to arrive came from a group that included ARK Invest founder Cathie Wood alongside Casey Ellison of Ellison Companies and Jonathan Graham of Horus Construction, a proposal reportedly valued near $6.8 billion. It didn't win.
Instead, Mayor Ken Welch selected Blake Investment Partners, led by Thompson Whitney Blake, a St. Petersburg native who assembled Related Group as co-developer and Elliott Investment Management as capital partner, with Stadler Development brought on to lead office strategy and Gilbane Building Company, Skanska and KAST Construction handling vertical construction. Blake's team, calling its proposal "The Burg Bid," offered $275 million for roughly 58 of the district's 86 acres and valued the full site at $405 million, nearly four times the value of the prior bids on record, according to WUSF's reporting on the May proposal round. It also promised the most affordable housing of any competing plan: more than 3,600 income-restricted units, about half of them inside the district itself.
Here's how the two most recent versions of this project actually compare on paper:
| 2023 Rays-Hines deal | 2026 Burg Bid (selected) | |
|---|---|---|
| Includes a new stadium | Yes | No |
| Footprint | 86 acres, full site | About 58 of 86 acres |
| Stated investment | Roughly $6.5–6.7 billion over 20 years | About $8.1 billion |
| Status as of announcement | Signed agreements, council-approved financing | Proposal selected, negotiations not yet started |
| Outcome | Collapsed in early 2025 | Still in negotiation |
What's actually written into the plan
Strip away the renderings and the plan has a handful of concrete commitments. The largest is housing: more than 3,600 affordable and workforce units, split between the district and other sites around the city. A separate piece of the deal, unrelated to Blake's bid, sends the Pinellas County Housing Authority to build 94 senior apartments on the district's 3rd Avenue South parcel, capped at 80% of area median income. PCHA director Neil Brickfield told reporters at the July announcement that residents priced out decades ago will get priority for those units, adding that at today's income limits, rent would land around $600 a month.
The plan's cultural anchor is the Woodson African American Museum of Florida, expected to be the first building the developer delivers once the district breaks ground, positioned along a stretch the team is calling Museum Row. A separate piece, the Legacy Link walking trail, is meant to physically reconnect The Deuces, the historic business corridor just north of the site, with downtown St. Petersburg. Welch made the connection explicit when he announced the pick from Campbell Park, blocks from the stadium, framing the whole project around what he's called the city's J-HOP priorities: jobs, housing, ownership, and economic opportunity.
Selected is not the same as approved
Here's the part easy to miss if you only caught the headline in July. Welch's announcement wasn't a signed deal. It was the start of what city officials themselves describe as roughly a year of negotiations before any binding agreement comes back to City Council for a vote, and construction can't legally begin until that vote happens.
The city's Community Benefits Advisory Council held its first public comment session on the plan in July, followed by a members-only deliberation session later that month. As of this writing, the city has said only that next steps will be announced later this year, which means the negotiation phase is still underway with no new public milestone yet on the calendar.
It's worth remembering how far the last version of this project got before it fell apart. The 2023 Rays-Hines deal wasn't just selected, it was signed, financed, and approved by City Council through multiple committee votes in 2024, including a contested 4-3 vote to issue bonds for the city's share. It still didn't survive contact with a hurricane and a change in team ownership. The current plan hasn't reached any of those approval stages yet. That's not a reason to assume it will fail. It's a reason not to assume it's locked in either.
What you'll actually notice, and when
For now, nothing on the ground changes. Tropicana Field's new roof is finished and the stadium is hosting Rays games this season under the existing lease. The 58 acres Blake's team would eventually develop stay exactly as they are while city staff and the development team work through financing, phasing, and the community benefits terms that have to be nailed down before ground can be broken.
If you're the kind of resident who's been half-following this story since the Rays-Hines announcement in 2023, the honest update is this: the site is finally headed somewhere concrete, the developer is a St. Petersburg native rather than an out-of-town name, and the plan on the table doesn't ask you to wait for a new stadium to see it happen. It asks you to wait for a City Council vote that, going by the last version of this project, isn't guaranteed the moment it's scheduled.
Whatever comes out of the Historic Gas Plant District over the next few years is going to reshape how downtown St. Petersburg connects to The Deuces, how many income-restricted homes exist inside the city limits, and whether the Rays' long tenure here ends quietly across the bay. Anyone who lives near it has a reason to keep watching the actual filings, not just the renderings.
If you're weighing what any of this might mean for property near downtown St. Petersburg down the road, Mazzotta Mallios Homes tracks these local shifts as part of daily work in this market. Reach out anytime you want a grounded read on how a specific St. Pete neighborhood is actually trending.
