'Today is a dark day': Group protests new Rays stadium deal outside St. Pete City Hall

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Before the dust could settle on the Tampa Bay Rays' big announcement, a small group of protestors outside St. Petersburg city hall kicked up some dust of their own.

"Today is a dark day in the city of St. Petersburg," declared Bishop Manuel Skyes of the Full Gospel Baptist Church.

Protestors believe the city is selling out its low-income families to make way for a fancy new baseball stadium in a not-so-dissimilar fashion to the fate of the historic and predominately African-American Gas Plant District some 40 years ago.  

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They said that selling the land to the developer takes the power out of the people's hands.

"Hines group and the Rays are not going to wait for decades for the rest of their money to be extracted from the development. They're going to flip it, and they're going to leverage it and the same outcome that happened 40 years ago is going to happen today," Sykes said.

The team and the developer have pledged to build 1,200 affordable and workforce housing units on and around the redeveloped land, but that's not nearly enough, says protestors.

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"Promises of affordable housing in this city have fallen flat before and proposing affordable housing that are 120% of area median income that's not an earnest proposal," said protestor Dylan Dames of Faith in Florida.

"There are probably about 16,000 on the waiting list for the housing authority, just do the math, 1000 when you got 16,000 waiting, and they'll wait until after this dome is built, that is disingenuous," Sykes said.

The stadium saga may be coming to an end, but the concerns over its impacts on low-wage families, on the other hand, appear far from over.