Tampa Stadium

Tampa Stadium (later known as Houlihan's Stadium) was a stadium located at 4201 North Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa, Florida, which opened in 1967. Tampa Stadium is most closely associated with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers National Football League franchise, which played all of their home games there from 1976 through 1997. The facility was also home to the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the original North American Soccer League, the Tampa Bay Bandits of the United States Football League, the Tampa Bay Mutiny of Major League Soccer, and the college football programs of the University of Tampa and the University of South Florida.

Tampa Stadium was demolished in 1999 following the construction of its replacement, Raymond James Stadium.

Origin and design

Pre-history and construction

The land on which Tampa Stadium was situated had been the perimeter of Drew Field, a World War II-era airfield which was the precursor to Tampa International Airport. In 1949, the city of Tampa bought a 720-acre grassy parcel between the airport and West Tampa from the federal government with the idea of eventually building a community sports complex.Al Lopez Field was the first phase of the project, opening in 1955.

Raymond James Stadium

Raymond James Stadium, also known as the "Ray Jay", is a multipurpose football stadium located in Tampa, Florida. It is home to the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers as well as the NCAA's South Florida Bulls football team. The stadium seats 65,890, and is expandable to 75,000 for special events. The stadium also hosts the annual Outback Bowl on New Year's Day; the annual pinnacle of USA equestrian showjumping, the AGA/Budweiser American Invitational; and the Monster Jam monster truck event after the end of football season in January or February.

Raymond James Stadium hosted Super Bowl XXXV on January 28, 2001, between the Baltimore Ravens and New York Giants and Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals.

History

Raymond James Stadium was built to replace Tampa Stadium at the demand of new Bucs owner Malcolm Glazer. It is located adjacent to the site of the old stadium on the former location of Al Lopez Field, a minor-league baseball stadium that had been demolished in 1989. Once completed, the final cost of the new stadium was $168.5 million, with the entire cost publicly financed. It was known as Tampa Community Stadium during construction, but the naming rights were bought for $32.5 million for a 13–year deal by St. Petersburg-based Raymond James Financial in June 1998. On April 27, 2006, an extension was signed to maintain naming rights through 2015.

Raymond James Financial

Raymond James Financial is an American diversified holding company providing financial services to individuals, corporations and municipalities through its subsidiary companies that engage primarily in investment and financial planning, in addition to investment banking and asset management.

History

Raymond James was founded in 1962 when St. Petersburg broker Robert James formed Robert A. James Investments. In 1964, it merged with Raymond & Associates, founded by Edward Raymond in 1963, to form Raymond James & Associates. Robert James' son, Tom James, joined his father's company in 1966 and assumed leadership of the firm in 1970. The firm initially planned to go public in 1969, but market conditions delayed its plan until 1983. Tom turned over the CEO's post to Paul Riley in 2010, but still serves as executive chairman.

In 2012, the firm purchased the Canadian assets of Allied Irish Bank. On April 2, 2012, Raymond James merged with Morgan Keegan & Company. The merger created one of the country’s largest full-service wealth management and investment banking firms not headquartered in New York.

Tampa, Florida

Tampa /ˈtæmpə/ is a city in and the county seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, United States. It is located on the west coast of Florida on Tampa Bay, near the Gulf of Mexico, and is part of the Tampa Bay Metropolitan Area. The city had a population of 346,037 in 2011.

The current location of Tampa was once inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Safety Harbor culture most notably the Tocobaga and the Pohoy, who lived along the shores of Tampa Bay. The area was explored by Spanish explorers in the 16th century, resulting in violent conflicts and the introduction of European diseases, which wiped out the original native cultures. Although Spain claimed Florida as part of New Spain, it did not found a colony in the Tampa area, and there were no permanent American or European settlements within today's city limits until after the United States acquired Florida from Spain in 1819.

In 1824, the United States Army established a frontier outpost called Fort Brooke at the mouth of the Hillsborough River, near the site of today's Tampa Convention Center. The first civilian residents were pioneers who settled near the fort for protection from the nearby Seminole population, and the small village was first incorporated as "Tampa" in 1849. The town grew slowly until the 1880s, when railroad links, the discovery of phosphate, and the arrival of the cigar industry jump-started its development, helping it to grow from a quiet village of less than 800 residents in 1880 to a bustling city of over 30,000 by the early 1900s.

Stadium

A stadium (plural stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit and view the event.

Pausanias noted that for about half a century the only event at the ancient Greek Olympic festival was the race that comprised one length of the stade at Olympia, where the word "stadium" originated.

Etymology

"Stadium" is the Latin form of the Greek word "stadion" (στάδιον), a measure of length equalling the length of 600 human feet. As feet are of variable length the exact length of a stadion depends on the exact length adopted for 1 foot at a given place and time. Although in modern terms 1 stadion = 600 ft (180 m), in a given historical context it may actually signify a length up to 15% larger or smaller.

The equivalent Roman measure, the stadium, had a similar length — about 185 m (607 ft) - but instead of being defined in feet was defined using the Roman standard passus to be a distance of 125 passūs (double-paces).