Janelle Irwin Taylor
St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman announced plans Wednesday to expand one of the baseball fields at Walter Fuller Park into a small stadium used for International Baseball games and college games.
The new stadium is intended to attract more baseball-related events to the area.
“We believe that quality International and college baseball can serve as an economic driver for West St. Petersburg,” Kriseman said.
Kriseman plans to ask the county’s Tourist Development Council to fund the project using bed tax revenue from people staying in hotels and motels in the county.
Though the targeted funding would come from the TDC, Kriseman said the city doesn’t know yet how much the facility would cost.
It would upgrade the current field on the northeast side of the park with bleacher seating for 1,800 — some of it covered. The project would add fan hospitality areas with tables and umbrellas, concession stands, a festival seating area, a children’s activity area, an air-conditioned press box, built-in dugouts, new bullpens outside of the playing area, a front entry facade and welcome plaza, and a new public address system and digital scoreboard.
The new facility also would benefit the Rays. Some of the players from a Puerto Rican International Baseball team are on the Rays’ watch list as potential recruits. However, the Rays have not committed to helping pay for the new stadium.
“We haven’t asked them to do anything related to this field,” Kriseman said.
The Rays will hold the final game of the St. Petersburg International Baseball Series at Tropicana Field. The Canadian team will play the Rays in an exhibition game on March 22.
The announcement comes as the Rays and Kriseman continue to negotiate a new agreement to allow the Major League Baseball team to look for new stadium sites outside the city, in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.
A previous Memorandum of Understanding between the Rays and the city was rejected by city council amid concerns surrounding development rights of the Tropicana Field site should the Rays opt to move before its contract is up in 2027.
Kriseman said those negotiations are still ongoing, but he remains optimistic a deal could be struck and approved by city council before the Rays home opener April 6.
“It’s kind of in council’s hands,” Kriseman said.
Kriseman did not say whether negotiations would continue into baseball season if a deal isn’t reached in time or whether further negotiations would have to wait until the next off-season.
The Rays president, Brian Auld, was at the press conference Wednesday, but did not weigh in on the negotiations with the city.
