Trop makes slow work of adjusting for disabled

As an inspection nears, the city appropriates $45,000 to correct violations that were pointed out last year.

By BRYAN GILMER

© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 6, 2001

ST. PETERSBURG -- It has been nearly a year since the U.S. Department of the Interior inspected Tropicana Field and found violations of state and federal standards for access by disabled fans.

The city and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays received an outline of what needed to be corrected in October after the July inspection. Diane A. Spriggs of the National Park Service, which oversees compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act at public sports stadiums, detailed them in an eight-page letter.

But it was Tuesday, two weeks before a federal inspector returns to make sure everything has been fixed, that the City Council appropriated $45,000 to correct the problems. Much of the work remains to be done before the inspector arrives.

For three baseball seasons since local disabled access activist George Locascio first pointed out some of the shortcomings in 1998 and for half a baseball season since the city and team knew with certainty what the law required to be fixed, Locascio and other disabled fans have simply had to work around the problems.

"The city and the Devil Rays were hit between the eyes when (federal inspector) Jack Andre made that walk-through," Locascio said Tuesday. "But they weren't hit strong enough until they learned he was going to come back down to look and make sure everything had been fixed."

First Deputy Mayor Tish Elston said it simply took several months for the city to assess the problems and determine the best way to go about correcting them.

"I had hoped we would have the improvements completed by the start of the season," she said.

Last year's Interior investigation found that dozens of flush valves blocked the grab bars disabled fans use to transfer from a wheelchair to the toilet seat. In some cases, paper towel dispensers were in the way, too. The city and the Devil Rays were wrongly counting seats with a major view obstruction as accessible. The parking lot was missing pole-mounted signs to designate handicapped-accessible spaces.

The findings stem from a complaint Locascio made in 1998, when he bought his season tickets for the inaugural baseball season at the dome. Locascio, 75, is a paraplegic who uses a motorized wheelchair.

His complaints -- and sometimes lawsuits -- have prompted changes at many public facilities around St. Petersburg. He has complained perhaps most fiercely about the city's domed stadium, dogging the city about the issue since the dome was in the planning stages.

Although Devil Rays operations vice president Rick Nafe said items such as the parking lot signs will be fixed before Andre arrives, only one flush valve will be modified for now. The idea is to run the solution past Andre and make sure he approves before changing all the valves. The $45,000 allocated Tuesday includes funds to modify all the toilets, Nafe said.

All the money comes from a city fund for capital improvements at the stadium.

The city and the Rays hope to solve another problem by shrinking the stadium.

Stadiums must provide wheelchair seats equal to 1 percent of the total capacity of a stadium, with an equal number of companion seats. Last year's inspection disallowed some of the seats the team had been counting, leaving the stadium 29 seats short.

Last year, the stadium had 44,476 seats, Spriggs' letter states. But the team recounted this year and now has decided the stadium has 43,772, Nafe said.

So the stadium must provide at least 437 wheelchair seats and another 437 companion spaces. But neither Nafe nor architect Mike Russell could give the exact number of wheelchair-accessible seats the stadium will have after the modifications.

"I can say to you with surety that there are more than 437 accessible wheelchair seats," said architect Mike Russell.

Spriggs' letter says last year's inspection found only 417 accessible seats, but Russell said some accessible seats were added in the reconfiguration that reduced the total number of seats.

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