Graham Brink

Editor’s note: Florida: Statistically Speaking is an occasional series from the Times Opinion team. Florida’s residents keep getting older. Age may be just a number, but our number is headed in only one direction — up. Our knees ache a little more, we have sprouted a bushel of gray hairs, and more of us are succumbing to the allure of an early bird special. We’re certainly more mahjong than Mortal Kombat compared to many much younger states. Our elastic has lost a little more of its spring.None…

What is it worth to keep the Tampa Bay Rays playing at the current site in St. Petersburg? That’s the essential question in the debate about how many taxpayer dollars to use to ensure the Major League Baseball team stays put. Write to us here . But first, some background.As most of you know, the Rays are looking to redevelop the 86-acre site on the edge of downtown that currently includes Tropicana Field, the domed stadium where the team plays home games. The plan includes a new $1.3 billion sta…

Editor’s note: Florida: Statistically Speaking is an occasional series from the Times Opinion team.Floridians don’t feel great about the economy. The overall sentiment remains well below average, and while our collective outlook has ticked up in recent months, it isn’t improving as fast as the nation as a whole.Florida’s consumer sentiment hit 69.5 in December, according to the University of Florida’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research Center . For context, the index’s all-time monthly lo…

The Tampa Bay Rays need more fans, the kind who buy tickets. It’s no secret that the baseball team is often near the bottom of the league in attendance, despite playing well on the field. Only three teams have won more regular season games in the last six years. But over that same period only two teams have attracted fewer fans.The Rays win games, but they struggle to draw fans.As most of you know, the team wants new digs and St. Petersburg’s mayor wants to make that happen. A $1.3 billion, 30,0…

Comparing yourself to your previous self can be helpful. Can you run a mile faster than last year? Is your blood pressure higher or lower? The answers help us understand if we are moving toward or away from our goals.But that kind of narrow self-assessment provides little context with the outside world. You may be running faster, but are you running fast enough to make the college track team? Your blood pressure may be down, but is it down enough to ward off heart disease?Measuring only against…

Some things aren’t the way they seem. They don’t make sense, at least at first.Take, for instance, the huge shift toward remote work and its effect on traffic. Before the pandemic, about 1 out of 11 Tampa Bay workers worked from home at least some of the time. Now, it’s about 1 in 5, according to the latest Census data.That’s 190,000 more Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco county residents able to work in their pajamas. And that’s a lot less people driving on our streets, right?Oh, we should be so…

That’s a good starting point as everyone assesses the multibillion-dollar proposal to redevelop the city’s Historic Gas Plant District, where Tropicana Field currently sits.

To put it mildly, not everyone loves the Historic Gas Plant District deal that includes a new stadium for the Tampa Bay Rays.The detractors doubt the rosy financial forecasts, chafe at the massive taxpayer subsidies and question the logic of building a new facility on the same site in St. Petersburg where the team has struggled so long to attract fans. They think the city is getting out-negotiated. They’d like a higher price for the land. They want less government interference.They have many val…

A new Major League Baseball stadium is pretty much guaranteed 81 home games a season. And, with any luck, the team hosts a few playoff games, too. But what about the other 280 or so days, the ones when the team is out of town or during late fall and winter, when the team doesn’t play?The Tampa Bay Rays and city officials have said they expect the stadium proposed for St. Petersburg’s Historic Gas Plant District to attract a heavy schedule of non-baseball events. Team officials feel the proposed…

Rain from Milton flooded St. Pete’s Lake Maggiore: ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing’