(The Center Square) — The sale of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays to a Florida developer could be finalized by September, according to a report in The Athletic.
The story says the $1.7 billion deal by a group led by Jacksonville developer Patrick Zalupski, Bill Cosgrove, Ken Babby and prominent Tampa Bay investors will likely keep the team in the Tampa Bay area. The team announced sole negotiations with the consortium in June.
Last month, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch both welcomed the possibility of a sale of the team by Rays’ owner Stuart Sternberg, who bought the team for $200 million in 2004.
Castor said Tampa would “dust off” its previous stadium proposal, which possibly could result in the team moving across Tampa Bay to Hillsborough County.
The Rays pulled out of a deal in March for a new $1.3 billion retractable roof stadium in St. Petersburg’s historic Gas Plant District as part of a larger $6.5 billion mixed-use development.
At the time, Welch said new ownership would be needed for the city to consider a new stadium deal. He said “that bridge had been burned.”
The Rays’ existing domed stadium, Tropicana Field, had its roof shredded by the Category 3 winds of Hurricane Milton in 2024. The City Council voted to repair the roof in April at a cost of more than $55 million and have it ready for baseball by the 2026 season.
Under the existing stadium agreement between the Rays and the city, each year Tropicana Field remains unusable adds another year to the agreement that was originally to sunset in 2027. Now it’s been pushed out to 2028, and depending on when repairs to the roof are complete, possibly longer.
The Rays have gone through four unrealized stadium plans in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area and are playing their home games at George Steinbrenner Field this season in Tampa. Steinbrenner Field is the spring training home of the New York Yankees, the Rays’ American League East rival.
The team is one of two Major League clubs that are playing at minor league facilities. The Athletics are in Sacramento during a transition from Oakland to Las Vegas.
As reported previously by The Center Square, Zalupski is based out of Jacksonville and is the founder, president and CEO of Dream Finders Homes, which has constructed 35,100 homes in 10 states.
He is also a member of the University of Florida’s Board of Trustees, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis with a term that expires in 2028. Dream Finders went public in 2021.
