Writer: Joshua Andino
2 min read January 2023 — Mayor Ken Welch delivered his State of the City address, where he highlighted his administration’s efforts to make St. Pete more affordable and announced his selection of the Rays-Hines Tropicana Field redevelopment plan.
The redevelopment plan, announced during Welch’s State of the City address, is likely to be the mayor’s most significant decision of his first term. “The history of the Historic Gas Plant neighborhood is a story of a dream deferred but through my decision today … it will no longer be a dream denied,” Welch said, echoing the famous Langston Hughes poem. “As a child of a Historic Gas Plant District, I consider it to be sacred ground. It has a history that predates baseball. It was a community.”
The Gas Plant District, where Tropicana Field sits, was a historically Black neighborhood in St. Petersburg that was subsequently razed and paved over in the 1980s for the stadium development. Equity and affordable housing were core considerations of each of the four plans presented and with the Hines-Rays plan selected, the city seems poised to address those historic grievances while attempting to keep the Rays committed to the city, a relationship that remains tenuous after the team hosted a separate press conference and declared they had not yet committed to St. Petersburg.
“Here we are, at the end of the beginning,” said Brian Auld, one of two team presidents, “We made it to the starting line, but we have a long race ahead of us.” He added that other obstacles, including city and county tax agreements, as well as additional public input, would be sought to ensure the history of the area is properly honored. Joining Auld was Hines executive Michael Harrison, adding that if the Rays were to abandon the site, the project would be fundamentally different with the lack of such a significant anchor tenant. “To the extent that ever did happen — and we hope it doesn’t — we would have to re-evaluate because it’s a different type of project when you don’t have the kind of anchor tenant that the Rays represent to that project and all that spirals off of that in terms of adjacent activities and uses,” he said. “But I really hope it doesn’t come to that.”
While the size and significance of the project made it the most anticipated aspect of the day’s events, and will continue to dominate conversations between a variety of stakeholders, Welch also highlighted the five key pillars guiding his administration over the last year and into 2023, consisting of education and youth opportunities, equitable development, arts and business opportunity, public safety and health, housing development and environmental resilience and infrastructure.
The mayor brought attention to the record 36,814 approved construction permits, totalling $1.3 billion in construction activity throughout the city and its booming real estate sector. Affordable housing, which was a core rubric for the redevelopment plans considered, has been an ongoing issue throughout Florida. Welch announced a county and federal partnership to provide $2.6 million in entail assistance while the city contributed another $35 million to secure a total $216 million in grant funding for a separate 697 affordable housing units.
For the new year, the mayor announced a partnership with Habitat for Humanity to develop an additional 56 affordable townhomes and the Shell Dash Project for 10 affordable homes south of Tropicana Field. He reiterated the city’s commitment to equal rights, support for the city’s LGBTW community and committing to continue the city’s perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign Annual Municipal Equality Index.
“Now the next phase of our work to bring this dream to reality begins. We are eager to get to work, to make this project work for everyone in our community,” said Welch.
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