Follow Up on a Follow Up: CDD Revenue Models

Thursday August 27th Tampa City Council approved the funding and development agreement with the Rays 4-3 (Hurtak, Miranda, Maniscalco voting no), the following morning Hillsborough County Commission approved the agreement 5-2 (Wostal, Cameron Cepeda voting no). This post isn’t meant to be a recap or explainer on everything in the deal. Hell, I’m not exactly sure what was approved. There’s a general gist, but there were so many versions of the agreement floating around, I’m still waiting for confirmation of the version that was voted on.

This post is a follow-up to a follow-up of an initial look at how the revenue sharing will work on the mixed-use portion of the project.

Let’s start with me making it clear I’m not an economist or real estate guy. As I’ve written previously, this all started with me wanting to understand how much development would be required to pay off a $100 million loan with tax increment funds. That scenario has since shifted. Now, the city has agreed to give the Rays $80 million in four $20 million installments, with the expectation of getting that much and more back over the 35-year term of the agreement. The current plan, presented to council Thursday, is to borrow the money, possibly short term, rolled into long-term debt later, so the real cost is $80 million plus whatever interest comes with it. Though with a new mayor and council inheriting the deal next year before the second $20 million is due on October 1, 2027, that borrowing scenario could change.

To defend the argument, the city relied on two scenarios: one referred to as the “minimum” scenario and one as the “target” scenario, both provided by the County Administrator based on development scenarios from the Rays. The city’s presentation briefly touched on both and shared the bottom line of each: in the minimum scenario the city would receive $100 million, and in the target scenario $180 million over 35 years.

The county only presented the “minimum” scenario to the commissioners and included a slide citing an AECOM feasibility study suggesting 3.6 million square feet of development could be supported over 30 years — 3.1 million of it residential apartments, the rest commercial office/retail space. The county acknowledged it had been provided two sets of numbers but didn’t offer any further explanation.

A quick point about the 70 acres in my models. As I wrote in the previous posts, I guestimated the “mixed-use” portion of the development. In the Rays’ own map of the Stadium District, they outline 3 distinct sections. The Canopy is the area they specifically denote as “a parkside neighborhood shaped by shade, greenery, belonging, and the rhythms of everyday life.” Based on the ratio of the map, it’s approximately 45 acres. The Champions Quarter works out to about 48 acres, against a 21.5-acre ballpark parcel, so ~26 acres of plazas/parking/stadium-adjacent uses. The remaining Innovation Edge is roughly 22 acres for Hillsborough College. How much of that or the 26 acres in The Champions Quarter could be taxable is an open question.

What I mean by “Water St”

When I say “Water St density” I mean dollars of taxable value per gross acre, because that’s what my models run on. On the 2026 tax roll, the 21 parcels still titled to Water Street entities carry $815 million of taxable value and 2.7 million heated square feet, sitting on about 56 gross acres, of which roughly 40% is built. That works out to $15.8 million per gross acre, and that’s the number my “Water St” model puts on the stadium site’s 70 acres.

It’s worth separating that from two other ways to say “Water Street”:

• Price per square foot. Those 21 parcels assess at about $301 per heated square foot overall; the three apartment towers (815 Water, 1050 Water, 1011 E Cumberland — 22 to 26 stories, about 1,300 units) assess at $322 per square foot. Channelside’s nine apartment buildings, for comparison, average $244.
• Amount of building per acre. Water Street’s built parcels run a floor-area ratio (FAR) around 4.5 in towers; Channelside’s apartment parcels are around 3 in buildings of 8 to 29 stories.

The distinction matters for what follows. The “minimum” scenario reaches Water Street dollars per acre with a Channelside amount of building (3.6 million square feet fits on 30 to 45 gross acres) priced at roughly $380 per square foot — more than anything on Tampa’s roll today. The “target” scenario needs Water Street’s amount of building, at that price, on every developable acre.

“Minimum” scenario, city/Rays pro forma, both millages

The “minimum” scenario lands between my two models: closer to the Water St one on the totals ($587 million collected versus $717 million; $100 million to the city versus $118 million), but it gets there differently. Less a ramp and more of a 20-year phased development on a 5 year cycle, each phase bigger than the last.

“Target” scenario, city/Rays pro forma, both millages

The “target” scenario is not a faster version of the minimum, it’s a different program, roughly three times the size. Working backward from the taxable values, it’s about $3.8 billion of construction in today’s dollars — 10 to 12 million square feet at the same prices — against the 3.6 million the feasibility study said could be built over 30 years.

The first step gives the scale away. The target puts $1 billion on the roll in FY34, which means about 2.4 to 2.9 million square feet finished by the end of 2032 — 70 to 80% of everything AECOM said could be built in 30 years. Six years to build while the ballpark is under construction and the college is being rebuilt around it. The first piece, roughly a million square feet, has to be finished by the end of 2029, the ballpark’s own opening window. For scale, Water Street went from roughly nothing on the roll in 2020 to $815 million in 2026, downtown, with a master developer on land it already controlled.

And then it keeps going: another $2.9 billion of construction in today’s dollars between FY35 and FY61, three and a half more of today’s Water Streets over 27 years. The only way that much building fits on the site is Water Street tower density — 20-plus story buildings at a floor-area ratio around 4.5 on every developable acre. Against the Rays’ own map, it needs roughly two Canopies: 74 to 87 gross acres of tower density on a 45-acre neighborhood. At Channelside’s density it needs more land than the whole site, ballpark included.

The lead image on the Rays’ “Development Renderings” page is hardly the dense 22-26 stories of Water Street’s apartment towers and 4.5 FAR necessary for the “target” scenario to be reached.

So this started with a question: how much development does it take to pay off the city’s money with tax increment funds? We’ve got three scenarios on the table:

• The “minimum” scenario, the one the county was willing to show, gets the city its $80 million back around year 31 — before interest on whatever it borrows to pay it.
• The “target” scenario gets there in year 22, but it’s the target scenario, and nothing in the feasibility study, the site map, or the renderings supports it.
• And my own 20-year Channelside model, which is still the one I’d bet on, never gets there at all: $72 million over 35 years.

So it’s possible the city gets its $80 million back. It takes Water Street dollars per acre out of a Channelside amount of building, and it takes 31 years. Any economic impact estimate built on $8 billion of taxable value doesn’t describe this site.