Twenty years ago, the land occupied by the Trop was a thriving neighborhood.
Nearly 800 people lived, worked, played and prayed in the 66-acre, predominantly African-American Gas Plant district, named for the two fuel towers that stood where the stadium is now. Businesses like the Harlem Theater and Citizen's Lunch Counter thrived. The area was home to St. Pete's first African-American elementary school and one of the community's first libraries. Three churches attracted parishioners from across South St. Pete. Shacks filled with renters lined some of the brick streets; well-kept bungalows lined blocks like those off of Fifth Avenue South, including the home of St. Pete's first African-American physician, Dr. James Ponder. Many residents owned their homes and had lived there for more than a decade.
Gas Plant survived for nearly a century, enduring hurricanes, 1960s urban renewal and the construction of I-275. But in 1986, like other African-American neighborhoods before it, Gas Plant fell for promises of economic redevelopment. Today, the district exists only through memories, news accounts and an oral history project for the University of South Florida.
As the Tampa Bay Rays tout their new vision for Tropicana Field and Al Lang Stadium, those still connected to Gas Plant's history wonder if these promises will end up just as empty.
"Some of my members were displaced because of the stadium," says Rev. Clarence Williams of A.M.E. Mt. Zion Baptist Church. "I think in a sense they feel fooled, because it was something that was supposed to benefit the community, and I don't see that it has."
Long before public talk of a stadium for St. Pete, city leaders had a plan for Gas Plant. In 1979, the City Council declared it a blighted area and looked for redevelopment options. They proposed an industrial park that would bring jobs and dollars into the community. In addition, they proposed affordable housing.
David Welch, 79, served on City Council from 1981-89 and 1993-97; he was open to redevelopment plans for Gas Plant.
"It was a close-knit neighborhood," he says. "It was not in the best conditions, though."
Welch, who owns an accounting business on 16th Street just south of the stadium, had ties to Gas Plant. His brother was pastor of a church on 14th Street S. where Welch worshipped. His aunt taught at an elementary school at Fourth Avenue and 14th Street South. Relatives had a dry cleaning business in the area; his father, a landscaping company at Fifth Avenue and 16th Street.
Welch's concern was jobs — industrial employment had decreased sharply in those years. But the plans for an industrial park were scrapped when the city couldn't attract the necessary businesses. Three years later, the city came up with another, sexier idea: a baseball stadium. Welch agreed it was the best option.
"We all make mistakes," he says. "When we built Tropicana stadium, I doubt seriously we would've built it if we had a referendum."
Residents were given relocation vouchers and Gas Plant was bulldozed. Twenty years later, the city's assurances of economic development around the stadium have not yet materialized. No hotels. No restaurant rows. No after-game nightlife.
The initial cost to taxpayers for the stadium was $110 million, and they've paid millions each year since to subsidize it. But few businesses have lasted in the Central Avenue corridor directly next to the sports complex. There's a reason why Ferg's Mark Ferguson is regularly quoted in news accounts about the field: His sports bar is the only business that's shown any longevity.
And if a likely success like the pizza/sub tavern Spizzico's didn't survive cozied right up next to the stadium — its parking lot has long been overtaken by weeds and errant shopping carts — then those businesses south of the dome along 16th Street never had a chance.
"You don't see anybody outside of the neighborhood coming here," says Badier Sade, owner of the 3 Brothers convenience store, two blocks from the stadium. "We just don't see it."
And though the stadium has created hundreds of jobs (though not the thousands promised in the '80s), Welch says the city's business predictions fell flat.
"A lot of businesses relocated to the dome and not outside the dome," says Welch. "As a result, we had little to no businesses that came."
Now the Rays propose a new $450 million deal to move the stadium to Al Lang and replace Tropicana Field with — does this sound familiar? — a mixed-use development that will bring jobs and affordable housing. Welch is skeptical.
"They've been through this crisis once to know not to do it again," he says. "I don't know what the big push is. To make these developers rich? To make the team rich?"
The Rays, through the Chamber of Commerce, have called Welch to talk about the proposals, but Welch isn't listening. Not yet.
"I was surprised they'd do this and not talk about it with the community first," says the former councilman, whose son Kenneth is a Pinellas County commissioner. "You can't plan it without the people. When the whole story comes out, then I'll meet with them. But I won't meet with them now."
And some former Gas Plant residents, like 60-year-old Barbara Smith, cling to the dome like they did the old gas plant's fuel towers. So many people lost their homes for the stadium besides Gas Plant, she says, including hundreds when the city tore down the Laurel Park housing complex in 1990 to make room for a stadium parking lot.
"I don't know how they could tear the dome down," she says, standing outside the A.M.E. Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Jordan Park. "Couldn't they do something else in there if [the Rays] leave?"
Mack Cambric never lived in the Gas Plant neighborhood. He lived down the road in Campbell Park. (That is, before the city tore down his parents' home to make way for I-275.) But he did have school-age friends in Gas Plant and remembers playing in the fields near Davis Elementary and eating at the neighborhood restaurants. He also remembers the anger surrounding the neighborhood's demolition.
"It wasn't no ghetto," he says.
But these days, Cambric, 51, does live in the dome's shadow, on the same land on which Davis Elementary stood. A resident of the Graham-Rogall public housing tower, Cambric is worried about his own relocation.
More than a few developers have tried to buy the complex and replace it with condos in recent years; the latest offer was rebuffed by the housing authority this summer. But the news didn't ease Cambric's mind. He's seen whole neighborhoods wiped out in a matter of months.
Sitting outside the complex under a gazebo, Cambric and three other elderly residents argue back and forth about the possibility of the Rays moving to Al Lang Field. The others don't believe it. They insist voters would never approve such a deal.
"I'm saying the dome ain't going anywhere," one woman adamantly states over and over.
Cambric offers another, perhaps more cynical, perspective.
"Let me tell you something," he says, leaning close. "Money moves mountains."
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This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2007.