11/20/2024
My Letter to the Pinellas Board of County Commissioners yesterday:
“Good afternoon, thank you for your time. My name is Pete Boland, from oft flooded Shore Acres.
I speak to you today, not as a candidate for elected office or a baseball fan, but as a family man, a native of St Pete, a proud small business owner, a board member of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association Pinellas, and as an engaged and concerned citizen.
Now is not the time to re-litigate the merits of this stadium deal and the Historic Gas Plant District redevelopment agreement.
That time has passed.
The deal has already been signed.
Now is the time to move forward with our legally bound requirements and invest in our future prosperity.
If we fail to do so, we are in legitimate legal peril, and the Rays/Hines group could very well STILL walk away with a large chunk of real estate without any obligations to build this stadium.
The bed taxes were first put forth to build the then-Florida Suncoast Dome now known as The Trop, in the late 1980s to lure Major League Baseball and big time events. The money is legally restricted to tourism marketing and tourism generating capital improvement projects.
It was bold to build the stadium back then. But We succeeded —the Trop has done both for our tourism industry and we got a major return on that investment.
Beyond the community events like high school graduations & the 81+ ballgames a year, the Trop has hosted the World Series, the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Final Four, Arena Football, College Football, major concerts, a Republican National convention , the WWE Royal Rumble, the New Kids On the Block and so much more…
Like the Trop, this new stadium project satisfies both legal uses for bed taxes as well.
If we don’t move forward with this project, we will be left with two empty, antiquated and storm-damaged stadiums without tenants. Yes- mark my words, if we will lose baseball, we will soon lose Rowdies soccer at Al Lang as well.
If you want to stick it to the Rays organization — like I have wanted to many times in the past (I’m still banned from their page, btw) —now is your chance— hold them to this agreement and force them to take on these cost overruns & invest these billions of dollars into our beloved St. Pete.
It is absolutely ludicrous to support funding stadiums for out of state businesses in Dunedin & Clearwater with these bed taxes for a couple dozen spring training games, and NOT support this transformational project that will provide us with so much more.
St. Pete & Pinellas is in the Big Leagues, one of only 27 places in the world.
We need to stay in the Big Leagues.
This is in part of what makes us, us.
It’s time we move forward: We must fulfill our obligations to the public, right the wrongs with the descendants of the Gas Plant, and deliver for the Hotel & Restaurant Industry that put forth these bed taxes to begin with. We must stop dithering… it’s time to approve these bonds and fund this project so that we can move forward for the long term health and prosperity of Pinellas County.
This is a moment in history—- which side of history do you want to be on?”
