As Rays stadium plans stall, new film remembers the Gas Plant neighborhood

Yahoo

18-02-2025

A new documentary starring former residents of the Gas Plant aims to tell the story of what life was really like in the racially segregated neighborhood that is now Tropicana Field.
Black-owned businesses thrived. Neighbors raised each other's children as their own. Kids caught crawfish in Booker Creek and scaled the two giant natural gas tanks that gave the neighborhood its name. It had the best views.
Then public officials and the St. Petersburg Times described the area as blighted. They sold the community on a redevelopment plan promising affordable housing and light industry. Residents believed they could move out and come back to something better.
None of that happened. That land was later used to build a baseball stadium on the prospect of luring a professional team to St. Petersburg. The Gas Plant, a safe haven in a city slow to reckon with its Jim Crow past, was lost in a bait-and-switch, residents who lived there say in the documentary.
'I can never forgive the city of St. Petersburg for the lie that they told us,' said William Graveley, one of two dozen Gas Plant descendants featured in 'Razed.'
'Razed' takes viewers through a timeline of how the Gas Plant came to be, how it grew into an important business and cultural district and how the neighborhood was torn down in the name of something better that never came. The documentary debuts this Saturday as the future of that land — and plans to right those wrongs — approaches a breaking point.
'Razed' revels in joyous memories and photographs but pulls no punches on what happened to the Gas Plant. But it stops short of wading into what is supposedly next for the Trop — a $6.5 billion public and private plan to build a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium and surround it with a neighborhood of housing, shops, restaurants, entertainment, office space and an African American history museum. The project's name pays homage: the Historic Gas Plant District.
'I hope it plays out differently this time around,' said Charles Dew, a St. Petersburg-born historian and author, at the end of the film.
Mayor Ken Welch, who features prominently in 'Razed,' negotiated terms for the project that include affordable housing, jobs for local workers and opportunities for minority-owned businesses. But those plans are now up to the Rays to carry out, and it's not looking good.
The Rays have until March 31 to move forward with that deal. Team brass as recently as Friday accused Pinellas County and St. Petersburg, which have granted $742 million in public funding toward the project, of breaking the agreement by delaying votes after last year's hurricanes resulting in cost increases.
'Razed' credits Gwendolyn Reese, a Gas Plant descendant and president of the African American Heritage Association, as a producer of the film. She helped the Rays with their development proposal as a paid consultant and gave public presentations on the team's plans.
Reese helped organized a reunion in 2021 where 'Razed' director Andrew Lee and assistant director and producer Tara Segall began interviewing descendants of the Gas Plant. She kept that group together to share ideas and suggestions with the Rays as the team worked on plans for the new stadium and Gas Plant project.
At a recent event discussing the film at Tombolo Books, Reese was asked by an audience member what choices or actions could be made to envision a better future for St. Petersburg.
'Well, mine is that we get up off our asses, excuse me, and move forward with the redevelopment of Tropicana Field,' Reese said, calling the deal 'the best thing that has ever come to St. Petersburg.'
'To move forward on that would, today, presently, would be a very great, giant step towards showing that the city is serious about that broken promise,' she told the crowd, 'but not just that broken promise, serious about progress, serious about equity.'
Reese told the Tampa Bay Times that though the Rays agreed to cover all cost overruns as part of the deal, increased costs due to delays should not fall solely on the team.
'I think we all need to sit down together and figure it out,' she said, referring to the city and county.
'Razed' premieres Saturday to a sold-out crowd at the Center for Health Equity with a rolled out red carpet for the stars of the film, the Gas Plant descendants. A second show has been added due to demand. The film's executives are considering a limited run in local theaters and have pitched the documentary to a film festivals, as the story of stadiums displacing communities of color has played out throughout the United States.