There's a couple of interesting follow-up numbers for the stadium poll that appeared in yesterday's St. Petersburg Times. The Times story today mainly goes a bit more in-depth with the poll numbers. The most interesting numbers indicate that 78% of city residents feel they have heard "a lot" about the new stadium proposal, while 47% of those surveyed indicated that they had attended no Tampa Bay Rays games in the 2007 season. Other questions are targeted towards public support for various aspects of the proposal. The article is really just hard numbers, and it's worth checking out.

Also worth looking at is the cover article in the Perspective section of yesterday's Times by Deputy Editor of Editorials Tim Nickens, who was the newspaper's city hall beat reporter during the process that resulted in the construction of Tropicana Field. He relates the stadium's completion to a wealth of progress in Downtown St. Petersburg, and suggests that the risks associated with the current stadium plan pale in comparison to those taken by the City Council in 1986. A very interesting read, and a good overview of where things were then, and where they are today, and how that relates to the ballpark situation.