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The future gets murkier for hurricane-damaged Tropicana Field

2024-12-15T08:00:00-05:00

The Tampa Bay Times is reporting on a stalled effort to repair damages caused during Hurricane Milton to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The 35-year-old stadium was initially set for a much-needed influx of $24 million worth of funding. Instead, with a last-minute reversal and given the separate uncertainty now surrounding the fate of its $1.3 billion new home, the future of the Rays franchise in the city has been cast in doubt.

Some 18 of the 24 fiberglass roof panels were lost during the storm after the 370,000 square feet of PTFE roof system failed in the face of 125+ mph winds. The cost of repairs had been previously reported at $55.7 million. This fall's hurricanes also led to a decline in construction spending for October.

Major League Baseball says damaged Tropicana Field won’t be playable until 2026

2024-11-17T08:00:00-05:00

A new roof would be the largest expense, according to the report, accounting for about $23.6 million, but the report states that “the primary structure is serviceable and capable of supporting a replacement tension membrane fabric roof.” Based on the preliminary timeline in the report, it would take a little less than 13 months from the start of construction until “final completion,” with the repairs wrapping up just before a projected Opening Day in late March of 2026.

The cost of repairs has been stated at $55.7 million. The Rays will play their home games in Tampa at George M. Steinbrenner Field (the Yankees’ Spring Training home since 1996) while repair work continues. The vexing financial fiasco is further complicated as the franchise is set to expand into new digs anyway by the start of the 2028 baseball season. Winds in excess of 125 mph removed 18 of the stadium's 24 fiberglass roof panels during Hurricane Milton back in October.

Hurricane Milton severely damages Tampa Bay Rays' Tropicana Field Stadium

2024-10-10T17:48:00-04:00

The roof at Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, sustained major damage because of high winds associated with Hurricane Milton, which made landfall Wednesday along Florida's Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm. According to the Rays, the Trop was built to withstand winds of up to 115 mph. The roof is supported by 180 miles of cables connected by struts in what the team calls the "world's largest cable-supported domed roof."

The Populous design in St. Petersburg (formerly called the 'ThunderDome') has existed mostly without sustaining significant storm damage since 1990. The roof system was made from 370,000 square feet of PTFE (fiberglass) Tensile Membrane manufactured by a New York company called Birdair, Inc.

The incident, which was captured on social media, sadly recalls damage sustained to the Louisiana Superdome during Hurricane Katrina for many Americans.

INSIDE LOOK ▶️ The MLB released footage from inside Tropicana Field as Hurricane Milton ripped its roof off.
Wind gusts over 100 mph were recorded in the area: https://t.co/q2ktAMiTik pic.twitter.com/llKNG9XTKg
— 10 Tampa Bay (@10TampaBay) October 10, 2024

Video courtesy 10 Tampa Bay/X

The MLB franchise, which is planning a new $1.3 billion ballpark with Hines for 2028, said they must now "assess the true condition" of the building before the viability of playing the 2025 season there can be determined.

Tampa Bay Rays partner with Hines for new MLB stadium development in St. Petersburg

2023-09-23T09:00:00-04:00

Hines has been announced as the developer of a new 8-million-square-foot mixed-use district and Major League Baseball stadium development in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The new home of the mercurial Tampa Bay Rays franchise is part of a larger $6.5 billion investment in the region that will expand over twenty years to include 4,800 residential units, another 1,200 units of workforce housing, 600 senior residences, a 750-room hotel, 4,000-seat concert venue, and 1.4 million square feet worth of office space, in addition to the 30,000-seat stadium. Another 50,000 square feet of civic space will be added along with a minimum of 90,000 square feet worth of conference space, all of which is bookended by the new Carter G. Woodson African American Museum Of Florida.

Rendering courtesy of Hines

Renderings made public in this week’s announcement from the club reveal a terraced exterior that’s meant to “bring the outside in” with activated concourse levels lined in biophilic elements and framed b...

Weiss/Manfredi reveal cantilevered museum expansion overlooking Tampa’s Hillsborough River

2021-11-12T12:29:00-05:00

In a follow-up to its recently announced renovation, the Tampa Museum of Art is growing once again thanks to a new $65 million expansion effort led by Weiss/Manfredi.

Image courtesy Weiss/Manfredi

Overlooking Tampa’s Hillsborough River, the new expansion affords a footprint that is almost double in size to 120,000 square feet. The added space allows for more education and exhibition initiatives while creating public amenities like a roof terrace and café that will enhance the museum’s status as the premier cultural destination in the rapidly growing metropolitan area.

Image courtesy Weiss/Manfredi

The TMA is currently in the process of renovating its existing 69,000-square-foot facility designed by Stanley Saitowitz in 2010. The renovation, meant to coincide with the institution’s centennial anniversary, is also being overseen by Weiss/Manfredi and is expected to wrap up next June. Put together, the overall effort will add some 51,000 square feet to the museum’s waterfront campus t...

Why is Florida's coastal real estate still booming despite rising levels?

2019-02-20T13:49:00-05:00

In Florida, you will see a bewildering mix of optimism, opportunism and denial in the real estate market: luxury condominiums going up in flood-prone South Beach, and property values rising in the vulnerable Keys, post-Hurricane Irma. And though the House of Representatives passed a bill to require real estate agents to disclose flood risks, the Senate has not reviewed it, and a culture of “systemic, fraudulent nondisclosure” persists in high flood risk areas.

As part of her Climate Changed series for The Guardian, Megan Mayhew Bergman investigates the reluctance of Florida's condominium boom (and the wealthy investors behind it) to cool it a bit on new developments in the face of projected climate change-related devastation.

"Humans tend to respond to immediate threats and financial consequences – and coastal real estate, especially in Florida, may be on the cusp of delivering that harsh wake-up call," writes Mayhew Bergman. "The peninsula has outsized exposure: nearly 2 million people live in coastal cities. On the list of the 20 urban areas in America that will suffer the most from rising seas, Florida has five: St Petersburg, Tampa, Miami, Miami Beach and Panama City. In 2016, Zillow predicted that one out of eight homes in Florida would be underwater by 2100, a loss of $413bn in property."

Picasso's tallest unbuilt concrete sculpture will be recreated in VR

2018-03-06T15:41:00-05:00

Envisioned to reach a height of 100 feet, the piece, titled “Bust of a Woman,” was approved to tower over the campus of the University of South Florida (USF), with its single cutout eye gazing blankly at its surroundings. The project — which also involved construction of a new art center — had an estimated cost of $10 million, however, and university officials ended up killing it due to lack of funding. Picasso passed away in 1973, and his angular, hard-edged figure never came to fruition.

Originally designed for a museum in Sweden, Picasso's "Bust of a Woman" was donated to USF in 1971 and would have been the tallest concrete sculpture in the world at that time.

Visualization of Paul Rudolph’s building with Picasso’s sculpture. Image: USF Special Collection Library.

He agreed to donate the project, which would have been located next to Paul Rudolph's brutalist building on campus. Currently, researchers at the school’s Center for Virtualization and Applied Spatial Technologies are working to recreate the 100-foot-tall sculpture in virtual reality.

Computer visualizations of the Art and Visitor Center with “The Bust of a Woman”. Image: K. Oles, CVAST.

The completed VR program will enable users to digitally walk through the 1970's version of USF's campus and experience Picasso's monumental sculpture in context.

Tampa Bay braces for impact of the storm that might destroy it

2017-09-07T15:12:00-04:00

Tampa Bay is mesmerizing, with 700 miles of shoreline and some of the finest white sand beaches in the nation. But analysts say the metropolitan area is the most vulnerable in the United States to flooding and damage if a major hurricane ever scores a direct hit. A Boston firm that analyzes potential catastrophic damage reported that the region would lose $175 billion in a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina. A World Bank study called Tampa Bay one of the 10 most at-risk areas on the globe.

Published more than a month ago, long before Hurricane Irma was even on anyone's forecast, this piece by Washington Post writer Darryl Fears tells the tale of Tampa Bay as a seeming paradise, with its 4 millions residents, hot real estate market, lofty development ambitions, construction boom — and the big storm that will, maybe, hit one day and put it all in peril.

Now with Irma leaving a trail of destruction in the Northern Caribbean and heading straight for the Florida peninsula, Fears just sat down for an interview with Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal: "[...] the big problem with this hurricane and with Tampa, St. Petersburg, Tampa Bay, is sea level rise. And sea level rise is not a big deal in and of itself because it takes so long to build. But when you add wind, you add surge, that creates a wave, just a wall of water."

The National Building Museum's blockbuster ball pit is coming to Tampa next month

2016-07-19T18:35:00-04:00

How can anyone forget Snarkitecture's giant monochromatic ball pit that took over the National Building Museum's Great Hall last summer? Following a wildly successful run that attracted a record-breaking 160,000 visitors, The BEACH is making a comeback at the Amalie Arena in Tampa, Florida starting August 5. Plus, general admission is free!

Photos by Noah Kalina.

It also looks like the installation is coming back bigger than before, spanning 15,000 square feet with a 75-foot-wide “shoreline”, and comprising 1.2 million of the antimicrobial plastic balls. The NBM version was 10,000 square feet, and its more than 650,000 plastic balls were reused in Hou de Sousa's winning design of the Dupont Underground's Re-Ball! competition. No word as of yet if and how the Tampa installation will be recycled.

If you plan on diving into the ball pit at the arena, keep a close watch on your loose belongings when “splashing” around. The Tampa Bay Times writes that more than 1,000 items were lost at the...

Scientists propose more realistic vision for Michael Maltzan's pier's underwater garden

2012-08-13T15:06:00-04:00

This week, architects and city staff met with marine scientists for the first time and heard the verdict: Maltzan's dream of a Key West-style reef with corals and easily visible sea life would remain just that in Tampa Bay waters. Now the architect is going back to the drawing board, looking for more realistic ways to present the centerpiece feature of the Lens, as the replacement of the current Pier is known.