Arts community feels crowded by Rays plan
Will there be room for everyone if the baseball team is allowed to move to the waterfront?
By John Fleming, Times performing arts critic
Published December 23, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - Don't expect American Stage to be cheering on the Tampa Bay Rays as they try to muster support to build a baseball stadium on the downtown waterfront.
"Usually I'm one who thinks that a rising tide lifts all boats, but I just feel like the Titanic is sailing into port here," said Todd Olson, the theater company's producing artistic director.
Al May, the theater's board chairman,had a one-word response to a question about the Rays' proposed stadium: "Gridlock."
American Stage is an important voice to be heard in the debate over the Rays' stadium, because the theater has been downtown for 30 years. It is one of the key players in the area's resurgence as a burgeoning center of arts, entertainment and residential development. Now the theater and other arts groups downtown are assessing the Rays' proposal. Some of the players - including leaders of the Salvador Dali Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts - are keeping mum. Others are ready to talk.
The major theme in the debate: Whether baseball will encourage downtown's renaissance, or kill the progress of the past 20 years.
May, a retired banker and major donor to the arts, thinks the stadium's impact would be horrible.
"Just imagine the lines of traffic heading into St. Pete when there would be a game," said May, who wonders where parking will be found for a 35,000-seat stadium. "On game days, no one would come downtown to attend the theater, go to the restaurants or any other activity. It's just not the right location for a stadium."
American Stage itself isthree blocks from the stadium site. But the company's annual outdoor production is performed every spring at Demens Landing, just east of Al Lang Field, where the Rays propose to build their stadium.
"It would be across the street from our park production, which opens about the same time their season opens," said Olson, a baseball fan who goes to Rays games and likes Tropicana Field. "What's going to happen when home runs start flying out and you have 30,000 people screaming? Can our patrons have any kind of theatrical experience at all?"
American Stage is not the only member of the arts community that is skeptical, if not downright scornful, of the stadium idea.
"It's the craziest thing I've ever heard of," said Pat Prince Burgess, owner of Salt Creek Art Works, a complex of artists' studios south of downtown. "That's the most valuable land in the city. I was married to someone in professional baseball for 18 years, and I spent a lot of time in ballparks, and they certainly weren't located on the most valuable land in the city."
JoEllen Schilke, whose Globe Coffee Lounge has been a downtown artists' hangout since 1999, takes a populist approach. "Besides making the baseball guys happy, how is this going to make anybody else's life better?" asked Schilke,who also hosts the Art in Your Ear program featuring local artists on WMNF-FM 88.5."It doesn't make the waterfront prettier. It will take money away from things like the arts and social services. Where do the citizens benefit?"
For some in the arts, the idea of building a major league stadium on the waterfront is out of whack with the way downtown has developed.
"There's no one thing that has been responsible for downtown's revitalization," said Dar Webb, whose Loftsville development company sponsors the Encore chamber music series at the Palladium Theater. "You can point to the Arts Center, Florida Craftsmen Galleries, the Palladium, BayWalk, the restored Alexander Building, all kinds of relatively small-scale projects. It has been an organic process. It hasn't been one gigantic thing, like a stadium."
But some of the most prominent players on the local arts scene are, like Mayor Rick Baker, carefully avoiding taking sides. John Schloder, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, said through a spokesman that it was too soon for him to make a comment.
Tom James, president of the board of the Salvador Dali Museum, didn't respond to a list of questions from the St. Petersburg Times. The Dali would seem to be in an especially delicate position, since the site of its new building south of Mahaffey Theater is just a few blocks from the proposed stadium.
Officials of the Florida Orchestra, which plays at Mahaffey Theater, just a long foul from where the ballpark would be, were similarly unforthcoming.
The proposal for a stadium does have a powerful supporter in Carl Kuttler, president of St. Petersburg College, which has a major stake in the arts in downtown St. Petersburg. In January, the college was at the center of a deal to create an "arts hub," which included its acquisition of the Palladium and the relocation of American Stage and the orchestra's offices to SPC's downtown campus.
The orchestra moved into its new space this month. American Stage's new theater is scheduled to open in January 2009.
"I see the stadium as a plus from the standpoint of the community benefitting from many things," Kuttler said. "A city that has multitrack offerings and venues for both the arts and sports tends to be a better overall city than one that just has the arts. If the stadium is successful, it will do nothing but further the arts."
Kuttler, a wheeler-dealer of the first order, likes to shake things up, and he is well aware that his advocacy for at least considering the stadium is provocative to many in the arts community.
"Let's not go where the end is yet," he said. "How many cities in the country would welcome this debate? It is certainly brought at a difficult time, because the perception of slow property sales, excess property taxes and insurance tend to drive a negative argument. But we should think outside the box. I believe this community is privileged to have this debate."
Kuttler even floated the notion of SPC getting into big-time college football, following the success of the University of South Florida, and playing in the Rays stadium. "I've been asked if I would ever consider taking our college into football, and we're looking into it," he said. "If you brought collegiate sports into downtown, wouldn't that bring more vitality?"
Now there's an idea that might be even more controversial than the stadium.
John Fleming can be reached at fleming@sptimes.com or 727 893-8716.