An April 18th report to the Mayor entitled “Preliminary Staff Analysis of the Tampa Bay Rays’ Proposal to Build a New 34,000 Seat Major League Baseball Stadium on the Al Lang Field Site” is currently available from the city website, and has some interesting tidbits in it. If you’re bored, feel free to scan all 45 pages - but don’t even think about busting a ctrl+f on the thing, this is once of them pdfs made from a scan of a printed document. Yeah, that’s how St. Pete rolls.

So let’s start with the fishiness, in this case let’s chat parking:

By relying on on-going coordination, minor scheduling adjustments, aggressive promotion of transit alternatives and short term parking resources, potential conflicts with downtown events exceeding 10,000 people could be minimized.

You and I both know there won’t be enough parking, and this is a pretty telling admission here. Aggressive promotion of transit alternatives? That’s your solution? In other words, you are suddenly going to make PSTA a super successful mode of transportation? Uh huh, just keep rolling those dope animated cartoons and that shit will take off in no time. Relatedly, the Rays said the average distance from parking to the stadium would be ¾ mile (or 25 minute walk). The city actually hired an independent transportation consultant who reported the following:

With St. Petersburg’s climate, ¾ mile is considered too far to walk to an event; ½ mile should be considered the maximum walk distance from committed parking facilities.

Now I don’t mind a walk every now and again, but with the average being ¾ mile, you know that means a good chunk of the spaces will be farther than that. That means if you live around 12th Avenue North or so, you may as well just walk. Yikes. Good to know the consultant called bullshit on that (they also suggested an additional 3,500 parking spaces would be needed).

The overall summary is pretty interesting as well, and actually closes on a somewhat more realistic note:

Given the site constraints associated with the Al Lang site and other findings/recommendations noted in this report, it may be challenging to accommodate the proposed stadium on the Al Lang site. If the Rays can successfully address the development and transportation issues the City has summarized in this report and a financing plan for the proposed new stadium can be developed that does not adversely impact the City’s budget, the City should continue to evaluate the merits of the Rays’ proposal.

Well shit, is this the first official City indication that the stadium move might not be all peachy? Now, granted this is a report from Rick Mussett, Senior City Development Administrator, not an official communiqué from the Mayor, but it is a bit refreshing to hear that this isn’t as done a deal as I had suspected. It is especially refreshing when you consider Mussett heads up economic development and probably really wants to see this all go through. I am just happy to hear a mildly negative comment, along with documentation indicating the development can’t adversely impact the City’s budget.

This could all mean nothing, I still think this is all smoke and mirrors to make us think we have a say. However, it was nice to see that this wasn’t just a thumbs up bullshit report like everything else that has been surrounding the new stadium. Keep an eye on the dates in the report as well, should this keep moving we’ll see a July 17 first reading of the ordinance, August 7 second reading and on the ballot November 4.