Tropicana Field, home to the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, sits on 90 acres of land that has potential for more than just a stadium. OT9 Design lead architect Sean Williams created a prospective architectural drawing and renderings for the site called Trop90, a sports-oriented development that includes a mixed-use space to house the reimagined stadium, along with an institutional campus, city-subsidized housing, retail and hospitality spaces, and green space. The plans are the culmination of Williams’ extensive research into successful mixed-use developments around MLB parks in the United States.
Williams specializes in sustainable design, which prompted him to incorporate the glass rooftop to promote the growth of living grass in the stadium. He also integrated the Pinellas Trail into the plans in a way that would encourage recreational use of the space during offseason. The Pinellas Trail is a unique 34-mile greenway corridor that connects many of Pinellas County’s beautiful parks, and is used by an average of 70,000 people each month – a perfect way to attract more traffic to Trop90.
If implemented, the Trop90 plans would prompt a revitalization of the surrounding community – promoting economic development, offering housing solutions, and providing recreation for many locals and tourists in the area.