Rays owner: Team will consider non-St. Pete stadium

The Tampa Bay Rays' pursuit of a new stadium won't stop at the St. Petersburg city limits.

Rays owner Stuart Sternberg said today that the team will consider options for a new ballpark within the Tampa Bay market -- and not just inside St. Petersburg or Pinellas County.

"Our ability to compete and, quite frankly, to survive rests on our ability to attract people and businesses to our ballpark," Sternberg said, according to a team release. "Our customers are our fans. And like any other business, we need to be in a location that is convenient for our fans to reach us."

The team's lease at Tropicana Field with the city of St. Petersburg runs through 2027. The Rays hatched plans for a new retractable-roof stadium to be built near the St. Pete waterfront in November 2007. Those plans met resistance and were shelved.

(Here's a Tampa Bay geographic primer -- Pinellas County is basically the peninsula between Tampa Bay and the Gulf of Mexico and is where St. Petersburg is located. Hillsborough County includes the city of Tampa and is the east side of the bay. The people on both sides aren't known to be cooperative. Tropicana Field is near the tip of the peninsula.)

"Baseball in the Tampa Bay area does not belong to Stu Sternberg, just as it doesn’t belong to St. Petersburg or Tampa, Pinellas or Hillsborough. It is a regional asset," Sternberg said.

"It belongs to our fans throughout the region. For this asset to be preserved, a comprehensive process to explore a new ballpark must begin. That process needs to consider all possible locations throughout Tampa Bay -- meaning Tampa and Hillsborough as well.”