Within 48 hours of Hurricane Milton tearing off the roof of Tropicana Field, Kenneth Johnson was on the phone with the city of St. Petersburg, Florida. Within 72 hours, Johnson said his team was on the site of the MLB ballpark.
“It looked like an atomic bomb went off,” Johnson, executive vice president of sports for AECOM Hunt, said of the aftermath of the October 2024 hurricane.
On Monday, the Tampa Bay Rays are set to host the Chicago Cubs under a new roof for the home opener of their 2026 season at Tropicana Field. That’s thanks to a roughly $60 million, global effort to mobilize, manufacture, ship, deliver and place a new fiberglass canopy atop the stadium in time for that first pitch.
Replacing the roof required collaboration over three continents on a tight deadline at the stadium, which the city of St. Petersburg is required to provide for the team through at least the 2028 season, St. Pete Rising reported.
Rays the roof
To re-cover the stadium, AECOM Hunt and project partners, including local contractor Hennessey Construction, ordered 400,000 square feet of fiberglass fabric panels coated in polytetrafluoroethylene by German manufacturer Verseidag-Indutex GmbH. The material is designed to withstand hurricane-force winds of up to 165 miles per hour.
The 360-foot long panels were then air freighted to China, Johnson said, where another firm conducted the arduous task of sewing together the pieces to match the existing cable systems on the ballpark.
Finally, the pieces arrived in St. Petersburg. The construction team began placing the roof in August 2025 and completed work in November, Johnson said.
Operating as Huber, Hunt & Nichols in the ‘90s before joining to form AECOM Hunt in 2012, the contractor performed the original work on the Trop. That meant that even the greatest hurdle on the job — crafting a new roof to fit the existing structure — benefited from work done decades ago.
“I think the biggest challenge from the roof standpoint was doing damage assessment, making sure that the geometry of the roof stayed intact,” Johnson said. “We were able to find the original engineered drawings that we did eons ago in the nineties, they were still on site.”
To ensure the proper size and scope of the project, the team conducted 3D scans and surveyed the cable system geometry with drones, Johnson said.
The work still to come
The hurricane’s timing threw a major curveball at stadium plans. Due to delays in funding approval because of storm damage in the surrounding area, the Rays backed out of a deal to build a new stadium in March 2025.
Things have since gotten moving again. Last month, the team unveiled plans for a new, $2.3 billion ballpark in the area. Still, that project is far from shovel ready, even as the Rays seek to throw their first pitch of the 2029 season at a new stadium.
Despite those lingering question marks, after one season playing at nearby Steinbrenner Field, the spring training home of Rays’ divisional rival New York Yankees, the Rays are back in their fulltime home.
Johnson said the work on the stadium did more than just recover the field — it also incorporated work to restore water damaged areas and install new amenities, such as bars.
“We have major league baseball approval this week. Everybody's good to go,” he said. “Matter of fact, the fans today will walk in the stadium. It's the best it’s looked in 30 years because we did a lot of improvements along the way too.”
