For people traveling from outside Pinellas County, getting to Tropicana Field via a bridge is difficult, but compared to other stadiums, parking is almost always a breeze.

Acres of parking around the dome will make it easier to get to and from Tampa Bay Rays games. Those parking lots will soon become construction sites when groundbreaking takes place next year. The first thing to be built will be a stadium with 30,000 permanent seats, but it will also be able to accommodate 50,000 people for non-game day events like festivals and graduation ceremonies.

Fans may need to allow more travel time to ensure they catch the first inning, especially the next Season.

Over time, at least 4,400 homes will be built around the stadium, as well as shops, restaurants, hotels, offices, medical offices, a museum and possibly a concert hall. All of this will be part of a community called the Historic Gas Plant District. Following typical residential patterns, About 10,000 residents could call the gas plant home – enough to be a city in its own right with a larger population than St. Pete Beach or Treasure Island.

The 6,000 parking spaces surrounding Tropicana Field will disappear when the gas plant comes online over the next 30 years. The best parking spaces directly east of the current dome — lots 6 and 7 — will be the first to go, as that is where the stadium will be built. It’s not clear how many of those spaces — if any — will be available for the 2025 season.

Where can everyone park during and after construction?

“We are working hard on plans to continue to provide a great fan experience during the construction of the new ballpark and will be able to share information on parking and traffic management as we look toward the 2025 season,” said Robbie Artz, Rays vice president of planning and development.

When asked specifically how many parking spaces would be taken out of service next year, the Rays did not directly answer.

The Rays and their development partner Hines are currently working on a plan to submit it to St. Petersburg authorities 45 days after the Rays submit a card either later this summer or early in the Autumn, which will show how This is what the stadium area will look like with its road network, open spaces and buildings.

This will likely happen after fans are locked in for the 2025 season with season ticket packages that automatically renew and include parking.

The plan must address parking for cars and bikes, how drivers will move around the district and various transportation options. Evan Mory, the city’s director of transportation and parking management, said he expects the plan to address where the cars will go. while Construction.

Also next year, groundbreaking will take place on the first of two stand-alone parking garages for the stadium. The larger garage will be built in the employee parking lot, Lot 9, just south of the planned new stadium between Fourth Avenue South and Interstate 175. According to the Rays’ project plan, this garage is expected to be completed by March 2026 and could be used as a parking lot this season.

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“After next season, things will be easier. This plan is really crucial for everything to go well next season,” said Mory. “There will be less parking than now. It is the year with the least parking that we will have.”

The second garage will be built over another employee parking lot area, Lot 4, at the southwest corner of First Avenue South and 16th Street. It should be completed by March 2027.

The two parking garages will together provide at least 1,200 parking spaces. According to Brian Caper, St. Petersburg’s economic and labor market director, apartments and offices will be built above the parking garages in the future.

The parking garages will be built by Finfrock, an Orange County construction company that was rated as the top choice by a committee of city and Rays officials. Finfrock has built parking garages for Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Universal Studios and the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tampa and Hollywood. The company specializes in using precast concrete, meaning the concrete is poured and manufactured off-site and assembled on-site. This method is considered more efficient and cost-effective.

Under the city’s contracts with the Rays and Hines, 2% of the spaces in those two parking garages will be equipped with electric vehicle charging stations. In total, 20% of those spaces will be equipped with electric vehicle charging stations should demand increase. The developers are required to provide monthly construction status reports for the stadium and parking garages.

Buildings throughout the Gasworks District will also have parking garages, although agreements with the city do not detail which buildings will have parking or when those parking spaces will be available. In total, including the stadium garages as well as shared parking in the surrounding residential and commercial buildings, developers have proposed 14,000 parking spaces and 6,932 bicycle parking spaces when all construction is complete, city documents show. Those parking spaces will It will be managed by Rays and Hines, who will keep all parking revenues.

In a meeting with Tampa Bay Times reporters in May, Rays president Matt Silverman said the team plans to demolish Tropicana Field and build a large parking lot by the 2028 season that could be used until new development is built on the site.

“As the development progresses, more and more parking garages and more parking capacity will be built,” he said. “In twenty years, there will be 12,000 to 14,000 parking spaces throughout the development.”

Silverman said parking spaces could be freed up at hotels, which typically have extra parking, and at offices that can be cleared at the end of the day for evening and weekend games.

“We will have more parking spaces available than today,” he said.

These numbers do not include metered on-street parking throughout the Historic Gas Plant District. The City receives all revenue from these parking meters. The operating times of these parking meters have yet to be determined.

“We will continue to rely on above-ground parking spaces in the coming years,” said Mory, head of the city’s traffic and parking administration. Director. For example, parking lots 1 and 2 west of the stadium across 16th Street will likely remain as surface parking for many years to come.

As for traffic around the stadium, an analysis by engineering, planning and design firm Kimley-Horn found that if the Historic Gas Plant District achieves its goal of 6,000 apartments plus more hotel rooms and office space, it would generate 58,248 new car trips per day. in and outside the area.

The company concluded that the roads surrounding the site “currently have sufficient capacity and are expected to continue to have sufficient capacity to accommodate the additional traffic associated with the Historic Gas Plant District.”