Photo: Tampa Bay Rays Unveil Render for New Stadium in St. Petersburg

The long-running saga over the long-term home of the Tampa Bay Rays has reached a conclusion.

The Rays on Tuesday morning released a render for their new stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida:

The $1.3 billion and 30,000-seat stadium will be built in St. Petersburg's Historic Gas Plant District near the present site of Tropicana Field. The goal is to have it completed in time for the 2028 MLB season.

"This will be a transformative project for the Rays, St. Petersburg and Pinellas County," principal owner Stuart Sternberg said in Tuesday's announcement. "We have proudly served as Tampa Bay's Major League team for 25 years, and we are thrilled to be in position to do so for decades and generations to come."

The Tampa Bay Times' Marc Topkin first reported Monday that the Rays would announce a deal for a new stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida. The cost will be shared between the Rays, St. Petersburg and Pinellas County, per Topkin.

For years, Sternberg has tried in vain to find a worthwhile solution to the franchise's stadium issue. As far back as at least 2010, he was planting the seeds of a possible relocation in the absence of a plan.

Rays ownership even went so far as to propose having the team split a season between the Tampa region and Montreal, an idea that failed to gain the necessary approval inside MLB.

While nearly all MLB fans will agree Tropicana isn't a suitable home for the Rays, Topkin's report may not garner universal approval.

Critics will point to how public subsidies for sports stadiums are historically a bad deal for whatever municipalities are involved. LoanDepot Park a few hours south of St. Petersburg is a glittering example.

Constructing the new Rays stadium near Tropicana Field would seemingly maintain one hurdle for fans that has kept them away in the first place.

FanGraphs' Michael Lortz pointed out in 2015 how the population within a 30-minute radius of Tropicana Field was relatively small. The typical traffic around Tampa can be enough to put off those who otherwise might have been interested in attending Rays games.

Starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow reflected in 2021 that "nobody wants to come over the bridge and sit in traffic for three hours—or not that long."

Perhaps the wider redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District will help to address that underlying problem by drawing more people to the area.

"We think there's a number of things that are going to allow us to materially increase attendance going forward," team president Brian Auld said Tuesday. "The first is that we're going to have a better ballpark surrounded by a world-class destination, so we expect more people to come to enjoy that incredible ballpark and all the wonderful things we're going to have around it."

If nothing else, Tuesday's announcement allows Rays fans to breath a sigh of relief because the team won't be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.