by JAKE NUTTING

A number of hurdles still lay in front of the Tampa Bay Rowdies before they achieve a stadium deal and an expansion spot in Major League Soccer, but the team took positive steps towards establishing a timeline for the process on Thursday in a meeting with the St. Petersburg City Counil and Mayor Rick Kriseman.

If the city council approves the ordinance in the next few months, a public referendum to allow the city to negotiate with Rowdies Owner Bill Edwards for a long-term lease extension at Al Lang Stadium would be scheduled for May 2. Edwards has said he will pick up the $250,000 bill for the special election.

The response from city council members to the Rowdies proposal for a lease of at least 20 years as the first step toward an $80 million expansion to Al Lang was largely enthusiastic. Only a few concerns stemming from the city’s troubled relationship with the Tampa Bay Rays arose.

Council member Charlie Gerdes suggested that rather than working toward a simple lease agreement, the city should pursue a more stringent “use agreement” similar to the one that kept the Rays from bolting the city for so many years to prevent the same from the Rowdies should they be tempted.

“You can keep them from leaving if Charlotte or Cincinnati or Detroit made them an offer they can’t refuse,” Gerdes said. “We can force them to stay.”

The issue doesn’t seem to a sticking point as the Rowdies stated at the meeting they would have no problem pursuing such a deal in their talks with the city.

Persistent attendance struggles of the Rays was also brought up during the discussion, leading council member Karl Nurse to ask if the team’s plan to expand from a little over 7,000 to 18,000 seats immediately as a part of a move to MLS was too much too quickly. The Rowdies averaged just under 6,000 in the stands this past year in the North American Soccer League.

Rowdies Chief Operating Officer Lee Cohen addressed Nurse’s worries by drawing a distinction between the different demands of baseball and soccer ask of fans and noting that past teams to make the jump from the lower leagues to MLS have experienced significant upticks in interest.

“Montreal, Vancouver, Portland are teams that have come from a second division or a third division level in this country,” Cohen said. “You’ll fill that stadium up no problem and will be turning people away by the direction of where this team is going.

“We’re only asking for 90 minutes. We’re not asking for anything more than that. You come downtown, you park in one spot, go the game, enjoy the game and then you flood downtown again afterwards.”

Should the city and the Rowdies receive the go-ahead from the voters to enter negotiations for a new lease, both parties would look to expedite the process as quickly as possible in order to further strengthen the team’s MLS bid. Kriseman did stress earlier in the week, though, that any new long-term deal reached to manage Al Lang would need to be approved by the city council and would still be contingent on the Rowdies securing an MLS franchise.

The Rowdies say they can be ready to put shovels in the ground and start construction on the upgrades to Al Lang as early as November if they receive all the necessary approvals from the city and get the good news from MLS.

“We believe that we can actually be up and running, based upon the infrastructure that we have in place with the current team, as well as the construction plan, we could be ready for MLS in 2019 if granted the franchise,” Cohen claimed. “So the construction process would start at the end of this year and would be complete in early 2019 for the start of the MLS season.”

MLS Commissioner Don Garber said in December he expects the league to make an official announcement on the two teams that will join the league in 2020 in the back half of the year, but the teams chosen would likely know a good deal of time before that.

No start date has been revealed for the other expansion teams that will fill out the other two spots, although Cohen indicated to the council that there is a chance the league will make a decision on those spots within the next 12 months. The uncertain situation with David Beckham’s Miami group that is still meant to enter as MLS’ 24th team could also alter the timeline if it fizzles out.