Sternberg States The Obvious

Now it’s officially official.

The Rays really, really want out of Tropicana Field and downtown St. Petersburg. They also want out of any understanding — and gag orders — that preclude everybody talking to everybody in the region when it comes to finding a business model-friendly new home for the Tampa Bay Rays.

Stu Sternberg, the Rays’ owner, stated the obvious by going to Tropicana Field to deliver that much-hyped, well-chronicled, long-overdue statement. And he could not have been more clear: “We will consider any site in Tampa Bay, but only as part of a process that considers every ballpark site in Tampa Bay.”

Don’t mistake that discordant reaction you might have heard for a vuvuzela chorus. It was the sound of legal alarms. The Trop contract disallows the Rays from even talking to other cities or landowners about moving the team.

Left unsaid because Sternberg, to his credit, isn’t some carpetbagger playing the infamous leverage-hustle game: “The clock is ticking. We also have a legal bullpen. And we know who our would-be national suitors are. We are a regional asset and a winner incongruously stuck on the fringe of an asymmetrical, hybrid market. We’ve tried to make it work with price-cutting and free parking. We put a lot of dollars into the dome, which amounted to throwing good-will money after bad. And we became winners. Worst-to-first WINNERS! None of it was enough. Our team is among the best in baseball; our attendance among the worst.

“We have to move. Either to the absolute best geographic and demographic site in Tampa Bay, which is likely in Tampa, to be honest, or a favorable one in another market. But if everything isn’t on the table and all parties who want in can’t join the regional conversation, we’re headed to Vegas or Charlotte. Wouldn’t you?   

“We’ve done our part. I’m still doing mine. I’ve said what I have to say. Now I’m listening.”

Yoga Hub

The connotations of “South Tampa” are as numerous as they are diverse. To some it conjures history: All those period-piece bungalows. To others, it’s leafy, affluent neighborhoods. Or urban elites. Or SoHo night life. Or a confluence of Irish pubs. Or political barometer. Or Gasparilla ground zero.

Now add “yoga hub.”

Within the last month, two studios and a nationally-known, yoga-oriented apparel show room  have opened. Evolation and Bella Prana are on South MacDill and the Lululemon Athletica Show Room is on South Howard. Moreover, Lululemon is currently scouting South Tampa for its retail outlet. (Also opening in the same time frame: Happy Buddha Yoga Lounge on Cass in downtown. And the new Tampa Museum of Art is offering yoga — included in the admission price — on Saturday mornings.)

The growing yoga presence is building on the burgeoning popularity of yoga, per se, as well as the success of two incumbent studios in South Tampa. The recently-expanded Yogani Studios on South Platt has been a yoga beacon for a decade. The Lotus Room opened its South Kennedy studio five years ago.

Florida Suncoast Dome Retrospective

You know how we all have these drawers — or cigar boxes — of stuff? Photos that aren’t album or cube worthy. Ticket stubs. Commemorative  pens that don’t work. A coin from that trip to wherever it was. Business cards that deserve such a filing affront.

Well, the other day I came across a beauty in the lost and profound department. Right under an “I’m Wearing Green Underwear” button. It was a souvenir card — not coincidentally the size of a baseball card — from the opening night of the Florida Suncoast Dome in downtown St. Petersburg. The co-feature was the 43rd annual Governor’s Baseball Dinner and First Major League Alumni Reunion. March 14, 1990.

The card features an exterior photo of the Dome and is emblazoned with the words: Welcome Major League Baseball.

How presumptuous. The facility was built on “Build It And They Will Come” spec to spite the other side of the Bay. And in spite of the misgiving of then Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth. But the Tampa Bay Devil Ray franchise was, indeed, eventually awarded to St. Petersburg and its Florida Suncoast Dome in 1996 — after the city had dropped its antitrust lawsuit against MLB over a squelched relocation move by the San Francisco Giants. And the D-Rays debuted in 1998.

In the context of the Rays continuing as the best team nobody pays to watch and looking at relo scenarios, how ironic to peer back two decades. The back of that Welcome Major League Baseball card had several itemized selling  points. To wit:

*Major League Commitment…22,697 season ticket reservations sold in 30 days.           *United political and corporate support coupled with a dedicated local ownership group.  *Major League Market…The 13th largest media market in America. Florida’s number one metro in America’s 4th most populous state.                                                                                  *Major League Facility…A 43,000-seat baseball showcase — The Florida Suncoast Dome.                                                                                                                                                                               WE’VE COVERED ALL THE BASES   

That was then. This is not.

Sternberg Makes A Regional Case

It really wasn’t a game-changer. More like a game acknowledger.

That was the well-hyped, threat-free statement of reality delivered by Tampa Bay Rays’ owner Stu Sternberg earlier this week at Tropicana Field. And, no, St. Petersburg Mayor Bill “The Rays are St. Pete’s Team” Foster was not by his side, although the two had chatted immediately beforehand.

Sternberg simply gave voice to the manifestly obvious. The Rays are a “regional asset,” he underscored, and they need a regional solution to their chronic attendance–and consequent revenue-stream–woes. He spoke of “rising above municipal boundaries.” And lest there be any status-quo wiggle room inferred by any local city councils: “Baseball will not work long-term in downtown St. Pete.”

With regionalism very much in mind, Sternberg  uttered the  “T” word after giving a shout-out to the work by the ABC Coalition. That’s the business-oriented group, which was formed by former St. Pete Mayor Rick Baker, that has recommended  non-downtown St. Pete stadium sites to replace the obsolete, cat-walk house that is the Trop. Two of those sites are in Tampa: downtown and Westshore.

The Rays, as is well documented, have addressed all of the addressable Trop variables. Lowering ticket prices, offering free parking, allowing fans to bring their own food. They even spiffed up the Big Souffle and managed the miracle of a small-market World Series run. Attendance still lagged. They can’t limit themselves to playing weekends and being a warm-up act to KC and the Sunshine Gang. Rays’ attendance this season, despite the head-turning fast start, remains in the bottom third of MLB.

Winning, noted Sternberg, was supposed to be the real game-changer. But it was “clearly not the case.”

Now he’s on the record for what it will take for openers: A true regional discussion. One in which the “entire Tampa Bay community needs to be brought  into the conversation.” One where “all possible locations” are considered. And just in case anyone in St. Petersburg or Pinellas County didn’t catch his drift: “We will consider any site in Tampa Bay, but only as part of a process that considers every ballpark site in Tampa Bay.”

Sternberg took the high road. Here’s what he could have said, and there have probably been times when he likely muttered as much:

“Look, you figure it out. You are the Tampa Bay region, and we are the Tampa Bay Rays. We want to stay here and make this thing work. You say you want no less. Prove it.

“We frankly don’t care about civic egos and endemic parochialism. The cost of breaking that (2027) lease at the Trop is the cost of doing business. It’s been done before. We can work that out with Portland or Las Vegas or San Antonio or Charlotte if it comes to that.

“This, as everyone well knows, is a weird, hybrid, asymmetrical, life-style market with too few corporate headquarters, too many folks with allegiances to other places and too many things to do in the summer besides watch baseball. Given all those givens, we can’t afford to remain on the western fringe of the market needlessly challenged geographically and demographically. That’s a variable we can definitely control. And we definitely want out. Otherwise we have an absolutely untenable business model.

“The optimal location, as the ABC Coalition pointed out, is not downtown St. Pete but somewhere near the hub of this Tampa Bay market. And, yes, that sounds like Tampa to me.

“I can tell you this. The Rays will ultimately survive and thrive and win a World Series. I’d like to see it happen here. We’re ready to engage. Don’t tell me who I can’t contractually talk to. Anybody got a number for Frank Morsani?”

Cuba’s Ironic Cycle

The irony.

One of the ways that Cuba is trying to gin up tourism is via condominium developments in conjunction with the construction of golf courses and marinas. Think Dominican Republic without propaganda billboards and socialist calamity.

The projects would be in remote locations, outside major cities and away from locals taking umbrage at a blatant “have/have not” juxtaposition. There’s even talk of the condo-golf-marina synergy being catalysts for a complementary business. The building of workforce housing nearby.

Can you say United Fruit?

The SBA Dice Roll

Right now Florida feels more like the “Cross hairs” than the “Sunshine” state.  

Housing-market implosion, insurance roulette, unemployment notoriety, oil slick scenarios and hurricane season. Our destiny is hardly limited to our own doing.

But now we find out that the State Board of Administration, the agency that manages Florida’s (nearly $114-billion) public pension fund, wants to reduce its holdings in publicly traded stocks and bonds and increase its allocation to the likes of hedge funds. As in pooled managed portfolios that aren’t regulated by the SEC. If the past, indeed, continues its prologue ways, we can expect hedge-fund managers to make more speculative investments as the tradeoff for the possibility of improved short-term gains–and an incidence of risk typically higher than the overall market.

It’s as if the last three years never happened. Boosting returns in public pensions should be a prudent exercise in long-term thinking not a roll-of-the-dice venture.  Hedge funds don’t outperform the S&P 500 in the long term.

And, ironically, this might not even become an issue in the 2010 race for governor. Among those agreeing with the hedge-fund strategy of SBA Executive Director Ash Williams: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, and her Republican counterpart, Attorney General Bill McCollum.

Roll ’em.

Tuition Rise Upstaged

The six-column headline on page three of last Saturday’s St. Petersburg Times’ Tampa Bay section called attention to a story of considerable interest to Florida college students. “University Tuition To Rise 15% In Fall” it said.

Unfortunately the sub-head directly below undermined it. It said: “Blurb Hed Goes Here Here Here Here Here Here Here Here Here XYYYXYYX.”

So, instead of delving directly into the details of what the university system’s Board of Governors had wrought, it highlighted an entirely different story. Namely, the increasingly noticeable drop in newspaper quality control. Fact-checkers? Proof-readers? Adult editors? We’re no longer talking typos and the occasional misspelling. We’re talking inexcusable lapses borne of consolidation and inexperience.

These are tough, challenging times for newspapers. But not that challenging.

Tone Deaf Promotion

The Florida Marlins have an even tougher time drawing fans than do the Rays. But nothing, repeat nothing, excuses staging a vuvuzela give-away night as the Marlins did last Saturday against the Rays. Cultural allowances can, presumably, be made for the annoying background drone these long, plastic horns have been producing in (South Africa-based) World Cup games. But Major League Baseball? Among the displeased: the ear-plugged umps.

Quoteworthy

* “Cuban socialism has produced frustrated idealists and opportunists who support the system only out of a search for personal gain. Raul Castro, who replaced his brother Fidel as president, has only introduced cosmetic reform. An increasing number of Cubans are disillusioned with socialism and are demanding change.”–Award-winning Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez.

* “I think she is really sort of a common-sense progressive. I think she has good liberal values, but she is also immensely practical and I think she will be fair to both parties.”–Former President Bill Clinton on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

* “Today, a counterrevolution is under way. As the computer and cell phone become our main reading devices, the book is being pushed to the periphery of culture. According to recent studies by Ball State University and the federal government, the average American spends more than eight hours a day peering into a screen–but devotes just 20 minutes to reading books or other printed works.”–Nicholas Carr, San Francisco Chronicle.

* “Bud Chiles is nothing more than a tool of the Republican Party. The only role he would play in this election is being the only path for a Republican being governor of Florida in 2010. I’d like to know who gave him the advice to do it. He’s a nice enough fellow, but he’s got absolutely no qualifications to be governor except for his last name. It really is almost sad…Max Linn was more credible than him.”–Kirk Wagar, Miami attorney and President Barack Obama’s top Florida fund-raiser for the 2008 campaign.

* “There are lots of studies of what percent of active managers beat the market and the answer is, in any given year, it’s very low. Over the long term, it’s even lower. People who are doing it may just be lucky. It’s like a monkey with a dartboard.”–Andrew Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration, on the advisability of hedge-fund investing on behalf of Florida’s public pension fund.

* “This is a big day for beaches.”–The response of Indian Rocks Mayor Jim Lawrence to the recent ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court affirming public access to renourished beaches.

* “Now that high-speed rail between Tampa and Orlando will become a reality, it will be important to create connections between the downtown high-speed rail station and the airport as quickly as possible.”–TIA interim director John Wheat.

* “There are a lot of people in the black community who feel that black leadership is being attacked. They want to do whatever they can to protect black leadership in power from wrongful persecution.”–Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White on the racial dynamics surrounding the handling of suspended–but not fired–County Attorney Renee Lee.