I live in Clearwater about 13 miles from the Trop. It can take 45 minutes or more to get there during rush hour. There are some infrastructure improvements already in progress that should help cut the travel time, but until those are complete and we see how they work in practice I'm still very skeptical of putting another stadium in the same spot. St. Pete is an awesome small city that has grown a lot (and continues to grow), but it's not an ideal location for a major league team.
I'm also concerned that Pinellas County could be on the hook for so much with other major projects in the pipeline. Our beaches are eroding rapidly, and the county is in a standoff with the Army Corps of Engineers over funding for the project. They need 100% of shoreline residents to provide a perpetual easement of their properties for public use in order to move forward. That's simply not going to happen. The county will likely need to fully fund the project, and that's WAY more important than a new ballpark that will be dipping into the same tax pool. It's critical for storm damage mitigation as well as tourism, which is a huge part of our local economy.
The Phillies have also provided intent to go forward with $570M in improvements around their spring training site in Clearwater, and I don't see it being fully privately funded. Still no word on the cost to both city and county taxpayers that I've seen laid out in concrete detail. The Rays would probably get priority over the Phillies/Clearwater Threshers, but that's a lot of money to throw at ballparks and surrounding development deals over a very short time period.
All in all, that's a lot of money that Pinellas County is going to have to come up with over the next few years, and I still feel that Tampa (located in nearby Hillsborough County) is a more accessible location for the majority of the local population. It would spread the taxpayer burden out across a greater geography and likely create both a better game day atmosphere and a more sustainable future for the team. I don't think this plan solves their attendance problems, and it creates a lot of questions for locals. I'm a Rays fan, and even I'm on the fence about this. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems like the county is banking on a new ballpark and more stuff to do in the surrounding area to draw in more fans. There's no shortage of things to do in St. Pete as it stands today, so I really don't see this having a meaningful impact on attendance.