Former city officials who backed Beckham’s Inter Miami stadium quest are now critics
David Beckham has sought to build a stadium for Miami’s Major League Soccer franchise for years and has worked with multiple administrations at City Hall — now two of those former city managers say the agreement’s financial terms need to improve before the real estate deal can make sense for Miami taxpayers.
Emilio Gonzalez, Miami’s city manager from 2018 to 2020, helped develop and promote the proposal to replace city-owned Melreese golf course with a commercial complex that includes a soccer stadium for Inter Miami. Now, he’s pointing to a hot real estate market and a transformed economy in saying the proposal’s financial terms need to be revisited.
Criticism of the deal, including from Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, is coming ahead of a City Commission meeting on Thursday to discuss the proposal. In 2018, voters authorized city officials to negotiate a no-bid deal with Beckham and his partners, but the final lease agreement requires approval from four of five commissioners.
Gonzalez told the Miami Herald that the minimum rent for the 99-year lease should be increased once a new city-ordered land appraisal is complete.
“The manager has ordered a new appraisal, and the appraisal is going to be driving the numbers,” said Gonzalez. “Given our real estate market, the expectation is that those numbers are going to be changing considerably for the benefit of the taxpayers of Miami. It has to. You can’t go from 2018 to 2022 and the needle hasn’t moved.”
City Manager Art Noriega said on Monday the new appraisal is not expected to be finished before Thursday’s commission meeting to discuss Miami Freedom Park. Commissioners have suggested a vote is not likely, though the terms of the deal are expected to be discussed.
Under the current proposal, Inter Miami owners Jorge and Jose Mas would lease 73 acres of the Melreese property for 99 years with a minimum rent of $3.57 million or 5% of the operation’s gross revenues, whichever is greater. Rent increases would be capped at 4% annually. The proposed $1 billion redevelopment would replace the golf course with a mall, office park, hotel, 25,000-seat stadium, parking structure with rooftop playing fields and a 58-acre park.
Gonzalez, who had been Mayor Francis Suarez’s first city manager, worked with the mayor to promote the Miami Freedom Park plan when it was first unveiled in 2018. Gonzalez said in an interview at that time that he expected the monetary benefit to the city would “increase substantially” by the time the agreement was finalized.
On Tuesday, he emphasized that he wants to see Miami Freedom Park built, but under better terms.
“I’m a big fan of the stadium, but clearly the numbers need to have a different valuation,” he said.
Suarez declined to comment.
READ MORE: What the proposed Inter Miami stadium deal says about team name and rent
Daniel Alfonso, Gonzalez’s predecessor as city manager, had discussed potential stadium sites with earlier versions of Beckham’s ownership group. Plans to build a stadium on Miami’s downtown waterfront and next to the Marlins ballpark were scuttled during Alfonso’s tenure. In the summer of 2014, Alfonso and then-mayor Tomás Regalado rejected an offer from Beckham’s group to pay $2 million in rent annually to build a stadium on the downtown waterfront in what is now Maurice A. Ferré Park.
This week, Alfonso called the current plan “a travesty.”
“The location is absolutely central to Miami-Dade County,” Alfonso told the Herald. “That somebody is going to pay you a couple of million dollars a year is a joke. They should do an honest valuation of the land.”
Inter Miami’s owners, chiefly MasTec chairman Jorge Mas, have defended the deal’s financial terms by pointing to team owners’ planned investment of about $100 million to clean up Melreese’s contaminated land and build the necessary infrastructure for redevelopment, including running utilities to the site. The proposal calls for a privately financed project, and the proposed contract requires the developer to cover all cleanup of Melreese’s contaminated land, though the agreement allows the team to seek federal and state economic incentives to help fund it.
Mas and his team also point to a projected $42 million annual tax windfall once the project is fully constructed, and they cite multiple peer-reviewed appraisals that determined fair market rent would be $2.28 million annually. The appraisals fuel Mas’ argument that by agreeing to pay $3.57 million each year for the Melreese property, he is proposing to pay rent above the market rate for land with significant issues. Those appraisals are a few years old now, leaving critics and supporters to watch for what the new appraisal will say.
Fried, a Miami native who’s running for the Democratic nomination in this year’s race for governor, jumped into the stadium debate Tuesday when she released a statement saying that the Miami Freedom Park proposal should involve more community engagement and public input — “if that takes years, then so be it.”
She added that in her campaign around Florida, voters were concerned with housing affordability and the rising cost of living and not a stadium development.
“I can assure you, I didn’t hear from anyone calling for a big stadium deal,” she said.
This story was originally published April 26, 2022 at 8:03 PM.
