How parking at Rays games could be affected during ballpark … – Tampa Bay Times

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It’s not easy to find parking space around downtown St. Petersburg on a Tampa Bay Rays game day — and it could get trickier as construction of a new stadium takes over Tropicana Field’s parking spots.
The Rays and city of St. Petersburg announced Tuesday that they finalized a deal for a new stadium that’s set to begin construction late next year. It’ll be built over the main parking lot in front of the current stadium.
“In order to break ground on the new ballpark, we’re going to have to take some of the existing parking out of play,” said senior managing partner Michael Harrison from Hines, the global development firm leading the project, at Tuesday’s news conference. “It’s really like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”
New parking will be the first pieces to be built in order to make up for what will be lost during construction.
Tropicana Field currently has a total of 7,000 spaces, according to its parking vendor ParkMobile. By opening day of the new 30,000-seat stadium in 2028, the developers hope to have 6,825 spots available.
But even amid construction, the Rays aim to have 6,000 spots open for game days, team president Brian Auld told the Tampa Bay Times.
“Every space that we need to take away, we’ll make sure one is already in place to cover on the backside,” Auld said.
One new public parking garage with 1,250 spots will begin construction next year to help provide spots for Tropicana Field games and events while construction of the new stadium is underway, according to the redevelopment master plan. It’ll be built behind the rock-climbing gym Vertical Ventures on the southeast corner of 1st Avenue S and 17th Street.
The parking garage could also be used to support parking for visitors going to St. Petersburg’s Edge District, a growing business and restaurant corridor.
Two more garages for office buildings within the 86-acre Historic Gas Plant District, the official name of the $6.5 billion Tropicana Field redevelopment project to honor the local Black community pushed out for the development that led to the current stadium. They will also begin construction in next year.
Those two combined will add 2,100 parking spots on 10th Street for game days at both Tropicana Field and the future ballpark, according to the master plan.
The last parking garage set to be built before the new stadium’s opening day will begin construction in 2027. It’ll add 770 spaces, intended for office and hotel parking as well.
With the new facilities and the current Tropicana Field Lots 1 and 2, the new stadium will reach the total 6,825 spots needed for its first game.
With any development at this scale, Auld said parking and traffic will be affected.
“We know it’s going to be complicated,” Auld said. “We know it’s going to be a challenge and we have our very best people working on it, and they’ve been working on it already for months.”
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For a long time, Tropicana Field’s parking lots didn’t generate any property taxes for the city.
“We’ve been given a blank canvas,” Harrison said.
The current lots are set to transform into a $6.5 billion neighborhood anchored by the baseball stadium. It’ll have 6,000 new housing units (which 1,200 will be set aside for affordable and workforce housing), hotels, office buildings, new streets for shopping and restaurants and the Woodson African American Museum of Florida.
It shows a mindset change for the area to integrate parking into the neighborhood rather than standing on its own as a surface lot.
“It’s not just going to be driving into a parking lot watching a game and then going back to your car and driving home,” Harrison said. “We’re really about creating a place that people want to linger and mingle and stay before and after a ballgame.”
Once fully built, the Historic Gas Plant District will have a total of 14,000 parking spots. Many of them will be built within residential, office and hotel towers or as multi-story garages.
But not all will be available for stadium events, as an unknown number will be exclusive for building tenants and guests. At least 6,000 will be available for games with hope for more, Auld said.
“But because so many of those other 8,000 spaces will be used for offices and other types of activity that oftentimes are needed on the exact opposite schedule that baseball games occur,” Auld said, “there should be a lot of synergies that come from it too.”
Bernadette Berdychowski is a reporter covering local business. She can be reached at [email protected].

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