Inter Miami stadium complex negotiations are done, mayor says. Crucial vote looms
Negotiations over the proposal to build Miami Freedom Park are complete, according to Miami’s mayor, paving the way for a crucial City Commission vote to either endorse or derail plans to redevelop Melreese golf course into a massive $1 billion shopping center, hotel, park and soccer stadium complex for the soccer club partly owned by retired footballer David Beckham.
“We have an agreement, in principle,” Mayor Francis Suarez told the Herald in an interview Thursday. “The agreement is obviously subject to approval from the City Commission.”
More than three years have passed since the 2018 referendum that allowed the city to skip a public bid for a plan that would transform 131 acres of publicly owned land directly east of Miami International Airport and negotiate the large real estate deal solely with Inter Miami’s owners. Beckham first began publicly seeking a Miami stadium deal in 2013.
In an interview Thursday, Inter Miami Managing Owner Jorge Mas said he believes he has the political support to push Miami Freedom Park forward.
“I am super excited. I’m very optimistic we’ll be able to pull four votes,” said Mas, speaking from Vail, Colorado, where he is on a ski vacation. “It’s not done until it’s done, but we wouldn’t be bringing something to the commission if we didn’t think it could pass.”
With talks finished, city officials are expected to start presenting the terms of the deal to commissioners in the coming days, and a vote could be scheduled within weeks. Because voters agreed to waive public bidding, the deal needs approval from four of five commissioners — and the margin for error is thin, with one commissioner already saying he won’t support the agreement.
Commissioner Manolo Reyes, a critic of the project since it was first proposed in the summer of 2018, said he remains opposed to the plan because he does not believe the Melreese Country Club, currently zoned as parkland, should be redeveloped. He added that if there were any plan to redevelop, it should go to a public bid.
“These people are in the business of making money,” Reyes said of Inter Miami. “I’m in the business of doing what is right for the citizens of the city of Miami.”
Details of the deal released late Thursday
City Manager Art Noriega, Suarez and members of their staffs have met with the Major League Soccer team’s representatives since early 2019 to discuss the terms of four separate legal documents that consist of two leases, a non-relocation agreement and a construction administration agreement. Late Thursday afternoon, an attorney for the team released to the Herald the 500 pages of legal documents that make up the deal.
“During the course of the last two and a half years, interrupted by COVID, these have been very intense and detailed negotiations,” Mas said.
The end of negotiations sets the stage for a pivotal moment in Beckham’s quest to field his Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami, in a Miami stadium. The team has played at its renovated practice facility in Fort Lauderdale, DRV PNK Stadium, since 2020. The Mas brothers, Inter Miami’s co-owners and principals of infrastructure giant Mastec, have led the effort to negotiate a 99-year, no-bid lease with the city that would allow the private development to replace the only municipal golf course inside Miami city limits.
Altogether, the deal would allow Inter Miami’s ownership to develop 73 acres into an office park, hotel, retail shops, a 25,000-seat soccer stadium and parking structure with soccer fields on the roof. Next to the paved portion, 58 acres would be turned into a park, under terms approved by voters in the 2018 referendum. The vote also called for a minimum annual rent of $3.5 million.
Proponents have touted the voter-approved framework of the deal as a boon for the city that will finally bring an MLS franchise to Miami-Dade County. Critics have described the plan as a no-bid land grab that would shortchange the city and eliminate a beloved golf course, the longtime home to a youth empowerment program known as the First Tee.
In a city scarred by a publicly funded stadium deal for the Miami Marlins, Inter Miami’s owners seek to frame the Miami Freedom Park plan as a privately financed alternative that will create a tax windfall for local and state governments, among other public benefits.
Reyes dismissed the concept as a lucrative real estate deal with a stadium attached to it to drum up support from sports fans.
“The stadium is an afterthought in this deal,” he said.
But Mas said he feels proud that the commitments he made publicly when he first presented the plan to commissioners, including a privately financed development, with a park and promises to make up for lost parkland, are incorporated in the documents.
“Everything we promised the community is there,” he said. “We look forward to delivering a transformative project for our city. I was born and bred in Miami so I am very proud to be involved in something of this magnitude and look forward to having our fans in Miami in a few years.”
The details of the final, negotiated contract language will matter.
Commissioner Ken Russell briefly delayed the vote to send the question to a referendum in July 2018 when he demanded better initial terms from Mas and his partners, including a commitment that taxpayers would not have to pay any of the costs of environmental cleanup — Melreese sits atop a layer of toxic soil contaminated by arsenic believed to be from an old municipal incinerator. Among Russell’s other demands: millions in contributions to the city’s Baywalk and Riverwalk projects and a $15/hour wage for workers in the development.
On Thursday, Russell said his top concern is that the city suffer “no net loss for green space.” Under the city’s code, any rezoned parkland must be replaced somewhere in the city. The Freedom Park documents’ fine print on parks could sway Russell.
As lengthy as the negotiation has been, even if the four agreements were approved in short order, team officials still need to work through a series of zoning approvals to redevelop the land under a “special area plan,” a mechanism used by developers to trade public benefits for expanded development rights. Such a plan would also require approval from the City Commission.
Mas said he was confident that the zoning process could be completed fast enough to break ground in Fall 2022.
“If we can put a shovel in the ground in the fall of this year, the construction of the stadium will take me 22 months, so we’re probably looking at late 2024 opening,” he said.
This story was originally published January 6, 2022 at 1:25 PM.
