With St. Petersburg deciding against tearing down Al Lang Stadium, there are the inevitable calls to bring spring training back downtown–but given the limitations of the site, don’t look for MLB to return.
Al Lang Stadium is the former spring-training home of the Tampa Bay Rays, but the general site hosted spring training decades prior at Waterfront Park to the north and the first version of Al Lang Field. When the Rays departed for Port Charlotte and Charlotte Sports Park for spring operations, the venue was slightly made over for pro soccer in the form of USL Championship’s Tampa Bay Rowdies.
The future of Al Lang Stadium has been up for some debate as the city of St. Petersburg debates the future of downtown. Al Lang Stadium occupies a very prime spot of land in St. Pete, with a commanding view of the marina waterfront and easy access to other downtown delights. Development in downtown St. Pete is a hot topic: for instance, a nearby $500-million, 50-story tower will feature condos, a Waldorf-Astoria hotel and office space, with condo sales already selling sales records. So a proposal to tear down Al Lang Stadium and replace it with a more upscale amphitheater, floated in April, generated plenty of support in City Hall.
Initially, anyway, until residents expressed their displeasure with the potential loss of Al Lang Stadium. Instead, the city is now looking at a proposal from the Rowdies, developed by ASD | SKY, to keep the old baseball grandstand but maintain the site as a soccer pitch, with expanded seating options,a new parking lot and a 360,000-square-foot three-story addition complete with locker rooms, a rooftop bar and year-round concessions. The cost: $49.2 million.
Hope springs eternal regarding a return of spring training to Al Lang Stadium, so any discussion of its future inevitably brings forth plenty of calls for spring training to return. And it was a lovely spot for spring training. It sits on an incredibly scenic site on the downtown waterfront, with the marina down what was the third-base line. This is the second Al Lang Field; the first opened in 1947 and featured a smaller seating capacity. It was built slightly south of Waterfront Park, the former home to spring-training baseball located at 1st Street Southeast and 1st Avenue Southeast. What exists today as home of the Rowdies is the rebuilt 1996 version of Al Lang Field, with expanded seating but less shade.
Jason Mathis, CEO of St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, subsequently told the Catalyst that the Rowdies “should be there forever, as long as it makes sense.”
“I think it could also be a fantastic spring training place,” Mathis added. “It’s a special place in a unique location, and you should find a way to maximize that space.”
Keeping baseball at Al Lang Stadium while accommodating the Rowdies may not be a challenge–and indeed, Al Lang was used for college and high-school tournaments before some reconfigurations for soccer–but attracting spring training will be. The state of the art when it comes to training camps is a large facility that can accommodate all aspects of camp for both minor- and major-league players. When the Atlanta Braves built a new training facility in North Port, they went for an 80-acre camp with CoolToday Park, five other diamonds, plenty of pitching and batting cages, enclosed workout areas and year-round spaces. When the Tampa Bay Rays moved from St. Pete, they went for a similar complex in Port Charlotte–and when previous owners pitched the state for funding for a new Pasco County training complex, they went with the integrated model.
So while we’d love to see baseball return to Al Lang Stadium–and a renaming back to Al Lang Field while we’re at it–we don’t think it likely. There just is not enough land available for a full camp. But hey, hope springs eternal.
Top rendering courtesy City of St. Petersburg; Al Lang Field photo courtesy Florida Memories.
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