Mudcats Stadium in Zebulon will be vacant in 2026 with their move to Wilson 
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5 County could be readapted, temporarily. There’s lots of space out there.
It’s been done before. I attended a MLB game in the original Arlington (TX) Stadium, where the Rangers played in a rag-tag assemblage of bleachers for a number of years, before moving into their current stadium…. It was 1980 and 102° at gametime.
Wikipedia: The stadium was built in 1965 as “Turnpike Stadium” minor league ballpark seating 10,000 people named for the nearby Dallas–Fort Worth Turnpike. The Fort Worth Cats of the Texas League moved there as the Dallas–Fort Worth Spurs and played there for the next seven years, setting many Texas League attendance records during their tenure at the stadium, especially after it expanded to 20,500 seats in 1970. However, the stadium’s real purpose was to attract a major league team to the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Arlington Stadium had been built to be upgraded to Major League standards of the era, and was designed to be expandable to up to 50,000 seats (although its final actual capacity was 7,000 seats below that).
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Outfield for the Mudcats stadium is wide open to pull that off.
A picture of the Arlington stadium you referenced.
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Ha. That looks so much like the old Arlington stadium. Just missing the upper deck around home plate
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This does not seem too positive for the Rays staying in the Tampa Bay area.
https://stpeterising.com/home/tampa-bay-rays-stadium-deal-appears-dead-city-delays-vote-to-fund-trop-repairs
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Nashville’s hurdles are starting to become more public.
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This article does a good job of telling the story of what is going on with the Rays right now and what the future might hold. Raleigh is mentioned as one of the potential landing places if the Rays stadium deal eventually falls through.
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Here’s the full quote for anyone who didn’t feel like clicking through to an X post so they could click through to the full story and then go searching for it:
What would be the most likely destinations if the Rays do move?
The usual suspects: Nashville, Tennessee; Salt Lake City; Charlotte, North Carolina; Portland, Oregon; Austin, Texas; and Raleigh, North Carolina. Don’t forget Montreal. In 2019, the Rays received permission from MLB to explore splitting its home games between the Tampa Bay area and Montreal. In January 2022, the MLB executive council killed the proposed plan."
So that’s seven cities for one team that may or may not be relocating from the broader Tampa Bay region. St. Petersburg and Pinellas County have both approved over $1 billion in bonds, tax breaks, and land discounts, and the team says it remains “ready to solve this funding gap together,” which is really quite the chutzpah, since unless or until the Rays walk away from the deal, they’re not even allowed to negotiate with other cities.
I hadn’t really thought of Austin as one of the usual suspects, so I dug into it, and found the committee looking to bring MLB to Austin. They have a social media account and a slickly developed website touting the city’s merits where you can buy branded merchandise and “Join the Movement,” so you can tell this is a very serious operation. https://www.atxmlb.com/
That said, the Austin group acknowledges that they’re already behind some of the other contenders.
"“Salt Lake City’s further along, Portland’s further along, Nashville’s further along,” [Austin Baseball Commission co-founder] Matt Mackowiak said.
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Which cities have actual ownership groups in place to make it happen? I believe it’s us & Salt Lake. Are there others?
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Yeah. Portland and Nashville both have putative ownership groups. In both cases, there are some very real questions about whether these groups can raise enough capital to purchase an MLB club. But the Portland group just signed a letter of intent to purchase a tract of land big enough to host an MLB stadium. That’s a long, long way from actually getting anything done, but it’s a tangible step.
The guy leading the Nashville ownership group has been trying to buy an MLB team for a while now, so there’s at least some credible money backing that bid, too. By the way, I purposely avoid getting pedantic about this point, but we technically don’t have a group. Dundon would almost certainly need to bring in more investors, but I don’t really think he’d have a problem doing that, so I don’t think anyone needs to get bogged down on that point. But the flip side of that is that these other cities have plenty of time to add more investors, too.
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Charlotte should not be on that list of potential sites unless an ownership moves it to Charlotte and builds their own stadium. There is NO movement in Charlotte for MLB and in my eyes for NC it is either Raleigh or bust. Charlotte has no room literally with NFL NBA and MLS for another team right now.
Nashville is flat out broke and could not afford a team right now with such massive spending for a new stadium for the Titans and still paying for a separate MLS stadium.
Why would a team move to Portland OR when that area is growing so slowly and I think the Mariners up in Seattle would not be happy about it.
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agreed
if they are going to do an East & West expansion, it should be SLC for West not Portland. Portland is a struggling coastal city that used to be far more thriving than it is now. SLC is significantly smaller than Raleigh, population-wise, but for geographic diversity they probably get it.
Raleigh for sure SHOULD get the Eastern expansion team…But the Nashville “boozy bacherlorettes” or whatever that team may be called may be the crowd favorite just due to the aura of Nashvegas. I remain somewhat confident that Dundon will make this happen with support from the new NC governor. If the NC governor election had gone differently, I’d be far less confident for Raleigh, but I think current gov will transfer momentum to new gov, plus the outside private money that has to be invested.
It’d be an amazing coup if we could somehow snipe the Tampa Bay Rays away from FL to Raleigh, or at least TRY really hard so we are practicing gearing up to win the MLB Eastern expansion years later.
I’m assuming Dundon is talking with Kaine (among other developers in the area) about if there’s a way to do a stadium in the future Downtown South space, especially since office development there at DTS is probably vaporized for the next decade.
Its been impressive seeing how prominent the Cary BCBS soccer stadium has been featured in the college championships recently. Wouldn’t count out space over on that side of town for a future MLB stadium too, with good access to I-40. For the CARS lol.
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Salt Lake is like us, divided between multiple metros (in their case 3). Their CSA is over 2.8 million.
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But SLC isn’t actually like us because Ogden to Provo is a longer distance than Greensboro is to Raleigh. If SLC is going to count all 3 metros to reach 2.8M people, then we should get to add through Greensboro’s MSA as well to boost our credentials, and that would put us over 3.3M.
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Salt Lake is the center, so Provo to SLC and Ogden to SLC are probably the most relevant distances. But also those 3 MSA’s meet the definition to be a single CSA. Greensboro and Raleigh do not.
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Kane still plans to move forward with downtown south, but obviously without the soccer stadium. However, they have made no new plans with that site. I don’t think Dundon is quite yet worried about the stadium and rather finding an ownership group, but Kane would definitely be the first one he’d call about a stadium. I genuinely do not see a baseball stadium at Lenovo Center. As much as he might want it, it sounds like any development would have to be on the 80 acres of Lenovo even if it is another stadium.
Now if they did manage to get something over by the arena, it would 100% have to be owned by the centennial authority.
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Yeah Dundon has mentioned before that he doesn’t want to be a stadium there anyway. I hope that means DTS is the targeted location.
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Hey that’s a win win it’s already zoned for a stadium. All they need is the money to fund it. It’s a great location.
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And perhaps that will happen? Reposting this as it may spark some sorely missed speculation on this thread. 
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would love exploration of MLB stadium at Cary Town Center location now that Epic doesnt want it any more.
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