It’s just four months before Opening Day at the new Miami Marlins ballpark, but the promised plethora of nearby dining, drinking and retail establishments that would serve sports fans and help revitalize the impoverished neighborhood around it remains little more than a dream.

Hampered by staff turnover, infighting, indecision and the lack of a cogent economic strategy, the city administration’s effort to fill 53,000 square feet of commercial space in the publicly owned parking garages flanking the stadium has barely gotten off the ground.

Nearly three years after the Marlins and Miami signed an agreement to build the garages, not one lease has been signed, and a real-estate broker hired only recently under emergency provisions to lease the spaces told the city commission that she can’t offer prospective tenants lease terms or documents because none have been drawn up.

Initial efforts to gauge interest from restaurant and retail operators suggest the hoped-for entertainment and retail stadium “district” faces even taller hurdles than bureaucratic foot-dragging — including poor neighborhood demographics, doubts about the site’s ability to draw customers outside game days, and design issues that could make restaurant build-outs costlier than normal.

The city also may have made an already tough job even harder by targeting higher-end businesses than the local market can support, some skeptics say — in the process also making an about-face on promises to local residents.

Bottom line: At the start, the only place game-goers will be able to buy a hotdog or beer will be inside the stadium, where the Marlins control all the concessions — and keep virtually all revenue they generate.

Proponents sold the publicly financed, $634 million stadium as an engine of redevelopment for downtrodden East Little Havana, saying its commercial component would include much-needed neighborhood retail along with sports bars for fans.

However, at the insistence of Commissioner Frank Carollo, whose district includes the stadium, administrators dropped the idea of mixing in local services and retail — aiming instead for a higher-end entertainment district focused on dining and drinking. City administrators and Carollo acknowledge Miami conducted no study or analysis before embarking on his strategy.

“There really was never a vision,” said Miami Parking Authority Director Art Noriega, whose agency will manage the garages.

Numerous local and national retail and restaurant operators have spurned feelers from the city, says another broker who informally worked with the parking agency to identify potential tenants. The broker, Jeremy Larkin, said the operators cited low incomes in the surrounding neighborhood, which includes two large public housing projects across the street, and uncertainty about the site’s ability to draw customers from beyond the immediate area.

Instead, Larkin lined up some interested operators who fit the city’s initial goals and could survive by catering to both the locals and fans: a discount pharmacy, a combination neighborhood market and restaurant that could expand during baseball season, a small Asian bistro and a Pollo Tropical with waiter service.

When the city went hunting for a broker this summer, though, it did not hire Larkin, one of two brokers to submit a proposal. Instead, it hired Mindy McIlroy of Terranova, which leases CocoWalk in Coconut Grove.