Rays Reveal Renderings of New Tampa Ballpark, Mixed-Use Development
Plans call for a 31,000-seat ballpark—smaller than any existing permanent Major League Baseball stadium—to be open in time for the 2029 season and offer diverse seating, celebration areas and year-round event spaces.
The Tampa Bay Rays have released the first set of conceptual drawings for their proposed $2.3-billion ballpark and mixed-use project to be located on a 113-acre site leased from Hillsborough College in Tampa.
Plans call for a 31,000-seat ballpark—smaller than any existing permanent Major League Baseball stadium—to be open in time for the 2029 season and offer diverse seating, celebration areas and year-round event spaces. An adjacent “Champions Quarter” neighborhood could potentially include “hotels, retail space, multifamily buildings, sports and health related buildings, commercial buildings, parking structures, restaurants and other related buildings,” according to the team’s January 2026 non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the college.
No contractor has been named for the project, which the Rays say is being designed by a Populous-led team that also includes Gensler, Kimley-Horn, RCLCO, Beck, Walter P Moore, Terracon and ME Engineers. Mortenson had been tapped for a previous plan to build a $1.3-billion ballpark for the Rays as the centerpiece of a proposed redevelopment of St. Petersburg’s historic 86-acre Gas Plant District. The ballpark component was dropped soon after a new ownership group took control of the team last September.
Known as Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus, the proposed development site is located across the street from Raymond James Stadium and adjacent to George M. Steinbrenner Field, the New York Yankees’ spring training facility that served as the Ray’s temporary home last season after 2024’s Hurricane Milton tore fabric panels off the dome roof of Tropicana Field, and damaged areas inside the building. Repairs are set to be complete in time for the team’s first home game of 2026, the first of three seasons remaining on its contract to play at the 36-year-old multiuse stadium owned by the City of St. Petersburg.
The Rays’ MOU with Hillsborough College—which calls for a minimum 99-year lease for the new ballpark and mixed-use property—says that construction of the stadium and the mixed-use development “shall be done in a manner so as to minimize interference” with the school’s operations and activities, including demolition of existing campus structures and construction of temporary facilities. In addition, new academic facilities are to be constructed on a portion of the site that will remain under the college’s ownership.
According to local news reports, the ballpark’s construction cost is to be split among the Rays, Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa, with the team paying at least half and covering overruns, repairs and maintenance and future capital improvements. All mixed-used elements are to be privately financed.
