Miami should be a soccer town. But we don’t like the public-land giveaway in stadium deal | Editorial

Back in 2018, about 60% of Miami voters endorsed plans to transform 131 acres of city-owned land into Miami Freedom Park, a commercial complex and soccer stadium that would be home to Miami’s professional soccer team, co-owned by retired footballer David Beckham.

That was pre-pandemic. Pre-skyrocketing rents and pre-tech-bro Miami. We’ve been through a lot in this community in four years., and we’re still coming to terms with how much it has changed.

So, while we don’t think the will of the voters should be ignored, we do think all those factors must be taken into account when the Miami City Commission, at long last, takes up the issue of Miami Freedom Park this week and decides whether to grant a 99-year, no-bid lease for private developers to build their project on the Melreese Golf Course property, directly east of Miami International Airport.

Miami then — and now

We urged voters to support the 2018 measure. But this is not a done deal. Commissioners must look at this decision through the lens of 2022 Miami — and that includes residential rents that have gone up in the intervening years by as much as 30% to 40%. Those are residential rates, not commercial, but they are part of the larger picture. This is not the same city it was four years ago.

It’s a billion-dollar project — and developers want to rent the land for about $3.57 million a year, (or 5% of revenues once the project is built, whichever is greater. )

That might have been enough four years ago. We don’t think that’s enough — or fair — in 2022.

If commissioners ultimately approve this, they must make the case to the community that this is the absolute best deal for the people of Miami. That should be their first priority. (We only have to remember the monstrously bad Marlins Park deal to see how that can go wrong.) The giveaway of public land — and let’s not pretend it’s anything but that, with a century-long lease — is an extremely serious proposition. It’s the only public golf course in the city. And green space in this town is slipping away. Once we lose it, it’ll be gone forever.

In that 2018 referendum, Miami residents were asked only whether to allow the city to negotiate and execute a no-bid lease with Miami Freedom Park — a consortium of MasTec executives Jorge and Jose Mas and Beckham. It was permission for the city to discuss a deal, not final approval. The reason the question went to voters at all was because commissioners would be handing over control of a significant public asset without any bidding by other developers.

The referendum passed, and by a considerable margin. That brings us to 2022 and the commission vote on the lease. Four of the five commissioners will have to vote Yes for it to pass. It only takes two to sideline it. At least one — Commissioner Manolo Reyes — is opposed. The city’s mayor, Francis Suarez, doesn’t get a vote, but he has been championing the cause for years.

We can see the allure of a professional soccer team in Miami led by Beckham. Celebrity, soccer, sunny South Florida — what’s not to like? Four other sites for stadiums have been considered and scuttled in the pursuit of the MLS dream in the city.

A massive project

We support the idea of a soccer stadium in Miami. But commissioners answer to the people, not a soccer star and not even a Miami billionaire. This is a massive project that’ll include a lot more than the 25,000-seat soccer stadium. Like a hotel, a “tech hub,” a parking structure, a park and — this is the big part — an entertainment and retail complex.

There are pluses for the community: Freedom Park will generate jobs, of course. The developers have said the city, state and School Board would get an estimated $42.7 million in taxes a year from the development, after build-out.

And the developers have pledged, repeatedly — stating it on their MiamiFreedomPark.com website — that this development won’t cost Miami taxpayers a dime. We would hope not, given the history here. As Jorge Mas told the Editorial Board, he is “100%” cognizant of the shadow that the Marlins deal still casts over any sort of public-private partnership.

“Do I think this is a great or good deal for the city? I absolutely do,” he said, adding that the main elements of the development “are as attractive today as they were three years ago.”

His group plans to take care of expensive fixes needed to make the property usable for development: $36 million for environmental remediation (the golf course fairways were built on an ash dump) and $65 million toward infrastructure improvements. There is value in that — assuming the city wants to develop the land at all.

Parks and green space

A 58-acre park is part of the plan, too. That’s important, because it will help to fill the green space deficit left if Melreese is gone. The developers also have pledged $25 million in cash toward that new park and to help with the city’s Baywalk-Riverwalk project, an unrelated waterfront promenade project. Will there be a net loss of green space in Miami? That remains to be nailed down — and commissioners must do it — but we feel strongly that there should not be. And that should be spelled out before any deal is signed.

And then there’s the issue of rent. Mas told the Editorial Board that the minimum proposed rent that would be paid to the city — $3.57 million — is more than fair, because it is higher than either of two assessments of fair-market rent for the property. But those assessments are years old now, from when the proposal was first unveiled. And rent increases would be capped at not more than 4% a year. A lot of Miami renters would love to have that deal.

Our concern must be for taxpayers. We simply don’t see how the developers can ask, with a straight face, that the rent remain the same as they proposed in 2018, given the changes in Miami’s housing market — something Jorge Mas acknowledged to the Editorial Board when he noted the “transformation” of the city in recent years.

How can you square the idea that residents are seeing huge hikes in rent — to the point where the city is becoming unaffordable even for the middle class — while developers of this project want to stick to their original rent offer? Any astute businessperson, if the positions were reversed, would be quick to claim that the market has changed — and so must the rent. Commissioners who vote for this must be, at the very least, unyielding on that point.

Voters need assurances

There are other assurances that voters deserve: that MIA is unequivocally on board with this huge development on its edge; that traffic impacts are fully figured out, mass transit included — and that taxpayers aren’t on the hook for them; and that the neighborhood nearby will be protected from unwelcome impacts, whether from traffic or crime or even the construction process itself.

As recently as last month, Miami’s own team of lawyers, working on the deal since 2019, raised concerns in a memo that listed at least 28 issues that they said still needed to be resolved, such as financial terms, deadlines, proof the developers can finance the project — and whether the rent should be higher.

The developers have posted the lease documents on their website, part of transparency efforts that we welcome. It’s a good way to build credibility in a city where the promises made to win approval of public-private partnerships too often have evaporated like morning mist as soon as a deal is approved.

There’s another safeguard for Miami: If the development fails somehow, the proposed lease now has — and this happened during the pandemic pause — a provision that the property comes back to the city in good shape, not filled with half-constructed buildings.

There’s still a deep well of distrust in Miami when it comes to deals like this one. In addition to the Marlins deal — where the cost ballooned from about $500 million to more than $2 billion, with taxpayers on the hook — we also remember the Miami Heat’s 1996 ad campaign to build the bayfront arena. County-owned land next to the arena was supposed to be a landscaped park, an idea sold to the public with renderings of soccer games and sailboats. Instead, it is a padlocked parking lot and some open grass — euphemistically called a “passive park” — used most often for limos and TV trucks during games. The county recently used it as a COVID testing site.

Small wonder that Miami has a trust problem.

We want to see professional soccer in Miami. We think the transparency efforts by the developers are commendable and necessary, given our history. But beyond any trust issues, we have serious doubts about using the Melreese golf course for any private development in 2022 Miami. We’re not sure the city should be letting such a large piece of green space slip away, even with its many problems. We also wonder if Miami voters would cast their ballots the same way in 2022 as they did in 2018, now that, as the popular narrative goes, everyone is moving to Miami.

Major League Soccer needs a home in Miami. We believe the Mas brothers and Beckham are the people who can make this work. Voters indicated they backed the idea, which we cannot dismiss. So here is our bottom line: We don’t like the public land giveaway. If the deal isn’t good enough to make taxpayers’ sacrifice worth it, then the developers and the city need to look, yet again, for Plan B.

This story was originally published March 8, 2022 at 1:00 AM.