History
From axe handle to Gas Plant: Welch closes in on historic promise
“I kept my promise, but the Rays didn’t honor theirs.”
A carved axe-handle; a southside wood yard; churches of fellowship; businesses of fellowship; a promise to a thriving, Black community; the Historic Gas Plant District. Of this list, only the axe handle remains.
St. Pete Mayor Kenneth Welch keeps that axe handle in his study – a reminder of the wood yard he worked as a boy under the watchful eye of his grandfather, Flagmon Welch. The wood yard, along with the churches, businesses and homes of the Gas Plant District, were relinquished on the grounds that a promise would be kept.
The promise: jobs, opportunities and development for the displaced Black community.
So far, those promises haven’t been realized by previous administrations, and, ironically, Welch’s first mayoral campaign was to make good on the very promise that was made to him. As of Thursday, the city has officially narrowed the Historic Gas Plant redevelopment proposals, recommended by city staff, down to four: ARK Ellison Horus, Blake Investment Partners, Foundation Vision Partners and the Pinellas County Housing Authority.
“It comes down to JHOP principles,” Welch said, referring to Jobs, Housing, Opportunities and Promises. “I said I would bring together partners at county, city, faith-based and business levels – you name it – and that we were going to give that our best effort in honoring a bid aligned with JHOP principles.”
The decision to raze the Gas Plant District during Welch’s youth, however, had a different purpose than JHOP: eminent domain for I-75, the dozing of the Historic Gas Plant, the flat, black tar pooling around what is now called Tropicana Field, for cars to tuck in next to each other. That’s how St. Pete became major league, though not immediately.
The then-dubbed Tampa Bay Devil Rays, now simply the Rays, occupied the former Historic Gas Plant District’s slant-roofed dome in 1998, nearly a decade after residents living in the Historic Gas Plant were displaced in the mid ’80s.
“Looking at that axe handle I keep, I remember that time in life,” Welch told the Catalyst. “I remember those promises.”
Taking agency to fulfill that promise himself, rather than it be given to him from those who promised it in the first place, was an unexpected journey. While his grandfather owned a wood yard, his father was the second African American on St. Pete City Council, elected in 1981, during Welch’s senior year of high school, at a time when he was determined not to follow in his dad’s footsteps.
Though an incident at a church prompted him to push back against narratives. A pastor said something Welch did not find aligned with scripture, and, with the encouragement of his mother, Alletha Welch, he penned a refutational letter. Many more followed for the op-ed section, “My View,” of the Tampa Bay Times.
Writing op-eds graduated him to the School Board, then later the Pinellas County Commission, a seat he held for nearly 20 years before becoming mayor. As a commissioner, he devised the Homeless Leadership Board.
“I was the first chairman,” said Welch. “I created the first housing trust fund for the county.”
Those early efforts on the commission echo today.
“Out of the Homeless Leadership Board came a financial source which has funded affordable housing all over the county,” Welch said. “It went on to fund Pinellas Hope and other sites that are still active. Penny for Pinellas for affordable housing is also still using some of those dollars.”
“Biggest lesson I learned from Dad was it isn’t about your name on a plaque. People don’t remember who was mayor, but they do know if there’s affordable housing, projects for the homeless. It’s always about impact.”
Welch’s mayoral tenure, though, was quickly complicated by circumstance: he was sworn into office remotely during the Covid pandemic, responded to unprecedented consequences following major hurricanes, and received significant public backlash for his handling of debris, disparagingly called “Welch piles.”
“It was an unprecedented set of challenges. Some criticism was about debris removal, but we removed more debris in 90 days than has ever been removed before. We moved over 2 million cubic yards of debris after (Hurricane) Helene.”
The debris removal was the largest in the city’s history, five times the total from previously combined storms, before Hurricane Milton swiftly followed Helene.
Those storms also forced a recalibration of city priorities, as the damage exposed major infrastructure flaws. Two of the city’s three sewer plants, for instance, needed to go offline due to storm surge.
Quoting what the owner of Naked Farmer, a St. Pete restaurant, said during a public feedback session, Welch reframed the situation: “The obstacle is the way forward,” adding that “we see the work we need to be a resilient community.”
The Gas Plant, a long simmer in Welch’s life from youth to adulthood, has similarly been criticized. After the collapse of the Rays and Hines deal following damage to Tropicana Field’s roof, a roughly $60 million repair, development rights returned to the city.
That has made the Historic Gas Plant District redevelopment politically central to the upcoming election cycle.
When asked how he helps today’s community understand the significance of the site, Welch said: “It’s a great example of equity as we implement it. Equity is equal opportunity informed by history.”
“There’s a lot of folks who don’t have that history,” he added. “That’s why we renamed the effort from Tropicana Field redevelopment to what it was before baseball, and that is the Historic Gas Plant.”
Despite criticism that he lost the Rays and mishandled the redevelopment, Welch argues, “I kept my promise, but the Rays didn’t honor theirs.”
Maria Scruggs
April 6, 2026at9:36 am
The Gas Plant redevelopment is being presented as a historic opportunity—but the public still doesn’t have the basic facts needed to judge it.
We are hearing a lot about legacy, promises, and vision. What we are not seeing are the details that determine whether those promises are actually kept:
• How many jobs, and at what wages?
• How much housing, and what level of affordability?
• Who is guaranteed to benefit—especially descendants of the displaced community?
• What are the enforceable requirements placed on developers?
• What financial risk is the public taking on?
Good intentions are not enough. St. Petersburg deserves transparency, measurable outcomes, and enforceable accountability—before final decisions are made, not after.
Steven Sullivan
April 7, 2026at2:02 pm
Maria Scruggs your asking questions that are promises and projections. Doesn’t mean its going to happen. The City needs office and retail alongside that housing which needs to be mixed. Housing doesn’t work if the infrastructure isn’t there to attract higher paying jobs. What you don’t want is a public housing experiment
Alan Delisle
April 4, 2026at10:04 am
It’s official. The Catalyst is Welch’s campaign manager!! What is this article saying?
Any factual summation of Welch and the Trop reads as follows:
Mistake #1: Welch cancels the Midtown deal which is exactly what he is trying to do now.
Mistake #2: He issues a new RFP with no plan behind it since he discarded the Kriseman plan that was based on professional planning and solid economic development principles.
Mistake #3: He sold out the city and folded to everything the Rays wanted, losing all his leverage. He put the Rays way before the city and way before the Gas Plant district that he is suppose to care so much about.
Mistake #4: He tried to sell the worst public-private stadium partnership ever negotiated by a mayor with twisted logic, red herrings and silence. Sad that many Council members failed to see through it, including Gabbard.
Mistake #5: He had no one on his staff with any economic development experience to understand how to manage complicated public private partnerships.
Mistake #6: He doesn’t even have the respect for the city to issue a new RFP with solid planning and economic development priorities for the site. Instead he accepts an unsolicited proposal which he said he would never do as mayor. All so that he has something to talk about during the campaign and to cover up all his previous mistakes.
Mistake 7: He has no vision. Blank. Rhetoric.
Welch is very fortunate that a hurricane and MLB put an end to his folly. St Pete, please be smarter this time. You will not get this opportunity ever again. The city is where it is with the Trop because of Welch’s ineptitude. Why do you think the new Rays ownership is in Tampa and why do you think there are no new economic development projects in St Pete any more. Can you hear the silence.
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:03 pm
Revisionist history you didn’t have a signed deal. Remember your boss told Mayor Welch they didn’t want to do a deal. So stop it!!!!At least he got them to sign a deal – FACTS
Judy Too
April 3, 2026at9:58 pm
Welch will negotiate the deal that includes the most reparations regardless of the cost to taxpayers.
Welch is the best at handing out taxpayer subsidies. He uses developers that will take the most subsidies and do the worst jobs.
Welch gets all the credit for trying to literally give the development to the Rays and Hines. PLUS using tax dollars to pay for half the $1.3 Billion stadium.
The Rays canceled the deal for one reason, Sternberg negotiated a sale of the team for $1.7 Billion! Not a bad return on a $200k investment with a free stadium for 30 years, taxpayers paid 100% of the cost plus maintenance and insurance for 38 years. With NO property tax revenues on 96 acres of prime land.
Welch’s father, Ken Welch lived in the neighborhood that was called the Gas Plant, mostly a rundown slum. He was on the city council and voted FOR the failed development we have supported for 36 years since it was built in 1990.
There has been no significant economic benefit while costing taxpayers millions starting with the acquisition of the area to this day. The residents were fairly compensated for the properties they owned (many were rentals).
All the facts and fantasies are easily found through searches on the internet.
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:11 pm
Judy how does it feel to know your grandpa pay and great grandpa pay treated another human being like dirt and trash for just existing. You don’t think his people and mine deserve more respect than the trap you’re putting out. We survived the mistreatment regardless
JAMES GILLESPIE
April 3, 2026at8:02 pm
i doubt that any one of us could do much better than welch after record hurricanes but we better learn how to do better. i am tied of hearing about the rays, stadium woes and all the money involved. bottom-line is the public money invested must advance the stadium area and the city.
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:17 pm
James you got my respect. You are not looking to tear a person down for public service
Nobodies perfect and you eloquently communicated that
Steve Dee
April 3, 2026at7:51 pm
In reality, the past is the past… honor it; remember it.
However, this property is a generational opportunity for the future. In reality, that’s all that matters. Your children will be walking the streets, enjoying the view.
In my humble opinion, Cathie Woods’s vision is the best option. It combines the best of the past with the promise for the future.
Signed, Love St Pete
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:19 pm
I agree
Kari Mueller
April 3, 2026at4:32 pm
Let’s remember the Rays were the ones who couldn’t move forward with the deal because THEY DIDN’T HAVE THE MONEY. Councilwoman Lisset Hanewicz pushed for the Rays to show their finances but the other council members let them off the hook. I was at the meeting where Brian Auld told the MEDIA and didn’t tell Council they weren’t moving forward. I was there when the Mayor swung the ax handle from his grand dad’s shop at the press conference, killing the Midtown Deal. Wait for a new administration before doing anything, we’ve seen enough catastrophic failures of deals the last 4.5 years.
S. Rose Smith-Hayes
April 3, 2026at4:28 pm
No one or entity has owned the cancellation of the Rays deal. I am still waiting for an explanation from the Mayor. I look to him. I do Not wish for the City to sell the property, but to always own it so that residents can have a say in what goes there.
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:41 pm
The prior majority owner at the time can elled it and tried to blame the county commission. He was broke and didn’t have any money. I would like a lease also but with this council it’ll be 30yrs. Plus what are you really going to put there if you leave it to people. More of the same? There are enough bars and restaurants along central and beach drive. More luxury condos? No! I think the ARK proposal is a great start. Housing and research and economic activities, offices with entertainment and retail
Kari Mueller
April 3, 2026at4:27 pm
The city should develop the land and sell parcels individually.
Horus Construction asked for record subsidies on their Deuces Townhome project that is still not complete.
Soils contamination will be a major factor on the Gas Plant site and the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for change order after change order like they did on the Deuces project.
Horus and Ellison are great at getting public subsidies.
Look at the giant wall of parking garage on the old police station site. That project is subsidized to build Office space instead of residential.
The Mayor obviously will choose Ark/Ellison/Horus.
City council needs to vote against giving the entire 96 acres away at a discount and obligating taxpayers to fund the developer’s infrastructure.
We need our tax dollars for our own infrastructure needs.
Contact all city council members today and tell them to stop this process!
Danny White
April 3, 2026at3:55 pm
It baffles me that Mayor Welch is believed to be the reason the Rays withdrew their plan… the ink had dried on the plan and it looked extremely promising. By that same logic, Welch caused the hurricanes! Hurricanes Helene and Milton (especially) were serious game changers for the city with damage never before seen across nearly every community. I can say confidently, as a 12-year visitor and 55-year resident, the post-storm debris management under the Welch Administration was creative, responsive, coordinated, and quite impressive considering the extent and volume of debris.
Steven Sullivan
April 5, 2026at9:27 pm
Thank you for saying that; the FACTS. Sad to say but his skin color is rubbing some people the wrong way and that’s troubling