7/23/26 - Future Land Use Change on Tap for Proposed Rays Stadium

This week Tampa City Council sit for a 13 item Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) agenda Thursday morning and a 13 item agenda (plus one mis-notice) Thursday evening. The CRA Board are slated to approve the FY27 CRA district budgets along with $15 million in funding agreements.

In the evening, they are scheduled to vote on the future land use change for the Hillsborough College land the state is giving away to the Tampa Bay Rays for a baseball stadium and mixed-use development. Emphasis on scheduled. When this was added to the agenda, there may have been an assumption they would have finalized a funding agreement for the project. As rumors swirl the city will play a smaller role in funding the stadium and that a special taxing district would be set up for the Rays administered by the county, it’s not out of the realm of possibility this hearing is continued.

CRA

Item 2, the Director’s Report mentions a $4,254,558 “realignment is required to correct the accounting treatment for the reimbursement of services the CRA receives from the City of Tampa.” There’s no more information as to what needs correcting. In a recent post looking at the Construction Services department budget, I noted the nearly $7 million in general funds its parent division Development Growth Management requires. It would be interesting to see how the CRA funding agreement with the city maps back to respective departments that work most closely with/on CRA projects beyond legal, finance and technology. But that’s $4.2 million more of CRA funds intended for the “reduction of slum and blight” going to administrative overhead.

Items 3, 4, 5 are funding agreements, meaning they have already been tentatively approved by the CRA Board and these are the final terms the recipient agrees to in order to receive the funding. The proverbial “last bite at the apple.” Though they wind up having to approve these again wearing their city council hat so there’s technically one more opportunity to change their mind.

• Item 3 - $5.4 million for 30 units with a duration of 50 years. 16 of the units will be studio/1BR at 80% AMI, 7 (6 studio, 1 2BR) at 120% AMI, 7 units at 140% AMI (4 studio, 3 2BR)
• Item 4 Curtis Hixon Park improvements, $5.5 million
• Item 5 $5 million 76 units 40-60% AMI, 10 units “will be designated as permanent supportive housing units intended to serve formerly homeless individuals”.

Item 6 West Tampa property acquistion - At the February 17, 2026 the West Tampa Citizen Advisory Council (CAC) meeting, they formally requested the CRA investigate the possibility of purchasing the former liquor store at corner of Albany & Main. The property owner agreed to terms below appraised value and the CAC approved the $700,000 purchase in May. Then the fatal shooting on Father’s Day occurred near that intersection. While too early to know what would be developed on the property, the memo notes “Acquisition will allow the CRA to directly remedy persistent slum and blighted conditions currently associated with the site’s operations.”

Item 11 - East Tampa Master Corridor Redevelopment Project - A request to send out a Request for Proposals to produce the plan. Staff doesn’t indicate what the budget is for such a plan, just asking for an approval to get back a proposal. The actual RFP isn’t included with the supporting documents, just an outline presentation. 22 years into the planned 30 year existence of the East Tampa CRA district and there’s no “Corridor Redevelopment” master plan.

Item 12 CRA budget - While the city waits for the mayor to present her final budget on July 30, the CRA Board are scheduled to vote on their Fiscal Year 2027 (FY27) budget this week. Growth in the CRA districts varied:

• Central Park 29.8% increase (major development recently came online )
• Channel district 2.9 % increase
• Downtown 0.1 % decrease
• Tampa Heights 1.9 % increase
• Drew Park 6.9% increase
• East Tampa 7.3 % increase
• West Tampa 10.4 % increase
• Ybor I 2.2 % increase
• Ybor II 3.2 % increase

Evening

Headlining the scheduled votes on Thursday is item 2, a future land use change for the proposed Rays stadium and mixed-use development on state land now occupied by Hillsborough (Community) College who Planning Commission staff clarify are the applicant (Board of Trustees) for the change, not the City of Tampa. Setting aside unanswered funding questions, what this vote would signify is the state giving away the land to the Rays. To approve changing the future land use designation from “Public/Semi-Public” to “mixed-use” development. Specifically, the 121 acres would primarily be designated Regional Mixed-Use 100 (RM 100), the highest allowable density, with a smaller 6 acre section designated Urban Mixed-Use 60. In total the development would allow for a maximum of 11,924 dwelling units and 18,491,010± sq. ft of residential or non-residential uses.

The property is carried on the tax roll at under $30 million; worth perhaps $50-80 million at prevailing Drew Park land rates (I calculated an average of $500,000/acre but at Dale Mabry frontage is double, so, your mileage may very). I’m sure you could value it more if you believe stadium-district redevelopment pricing and “economic impact” statements. But it’s public land you’ll never get back. Hard to put a value on that.

12 additional rezoning applications are on the evening agenda including item 9, a request for a planned development in Palmetto Beach that appears to have 14 (!!) waivers. Additionally, the opening agenda item is the second required public hearing for the FY27 housing budget for federal grant funds.

Next week to close out July the mayor will present her proposed FY27 budget, the final budget for her administration and this city council. The one the next mayor and council will inherit. A preliminary look by Tampa Monitor at the tax rolls provided by the property appraiser the city will see a 4.3% increase in tax revenue, down from 7% in FY26. A difference between $16 million and $25 million. An additional note about the budget.

There was no wrap-up for last week’s meeting (I have a good excuse) but one important change regarding the budget process was mentioned under new business. When the budget workshops were initially scheduled, the mayor was going to present the budget last week on the 16th. When that was pushed to July 30th (because council didn’t want to do a special call meeting prior to the CRA meeting this week), the workshops weren’t adjusted accordingly. So the August 3rd workshop was scheduled to be on the general fund — less than a week after the public receiving the budget. Something I may have strongly voiced my concern with to council. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who saw that to be an issue so at least now the general fund workshop will be the final workshop on August 17th at 5pm.