Don’t let Miami walk back green space commitment made to save Freedom Park stadium deal | Opinion

The Miami City Commission vote in 2022 to allow public land to be the site of Miami Freedom Park — the private soccer stadium/commercial complex that will house Inter Miami — was hard to reach and contentious.

With one commissioner potentially holding up the deal, records show the project’s main cheerleader, Mayor Francis Suarez, agreed to a concession: that developers pay to improve park spaces across the city.

Now Suarez wants the commission to vote to essentially walk back that commitment on Thursday. If he’s able to ram his proposal through, it’ll be based on what appears to be a technicality, a loophole created by the failure of the city’s own staff to do its job. Instead of defending Miami’s commitment to its residents, Suarez seems to be doing the bidding of Freedom Park.

In 2022, then-Commissioner Ken Russell seemed reluctant to cast the deciding vote on the stadium deal. In a fractious meeting — at one point, Suarez pulled Russell into a backroom — Russell eventually agreed to OK a 99-year, no-bid lease with private developers, including retired soccer player David Beckham and business partners Jorge and José Mas, to build the stadium complex on a city-owned golf course near Miami International Airport.

Russell’s condition: that instead of using $20 million only for a 58-acre park at the site of the stadium complex, part of the money would also be spent for parks citywide. At that meeting, Suarez then directed the commission chair to add an amendment to the stadium deal proposal “to include the additional conditions by Commissioner Russell,” the meeting minutes, reported by the Herald on Wednesday, show.

The problem is that the city’s attorneys never included the amendment in the final resolution approving the agreement, which Suarez signed a week later. No one knows why that didn’t happen, but it’s hard not to wonder whether that was more than an oversight by city staff, especially when there was substantial and very public discussion about Russell’s terms during the meeting.

“[The final resolution] the mayor signed was completely incorrect,” Russell told the Herald Editorial Board. “The city attorney’s office did not capture the amendment as they should have.”

In a Tuesday interview with the Herald, Suarez acknowledged that the commission did vote to spend some of the $20 million on citywide parks. He said there was “political appetite” back then to “divert” the funds away from the park at the stadium site.

What Suarez is not saying is that the political landscape of the city commission is what’s changed. Russell has since left office and there are two new commissioners on the dais.

Commissioners Damian Pardo and Miguel Gabela were both elected on promises of reforming City Hall. Voting against the mayor’s request that they walk back on the commission’s commitment from three years ago is a good way to show they will hold the line against developers calling the shots in Miami.

Suarez is using a 2018 voter-approved ballot item as an excuse for walking back the vote. The ballot question, which received 60% approval, allowed the city to negotiate a development deal for a billion-dollar Major League Soccer stadium on city land. One of the contingencies was that developers spend $20 million of their own money on a large public park attached to the site, “or other green space.”

Suarez contends that all money was supposed to go to the 58-acre park at the stadium site — “It was always originally intended to be that way,” he told the Herald — seemingly ignoring the money could also be used for “other green space.”

Because the Russell amendment never made it into the final deal, the commission might have the legal standing to undo it without having to amend the entire contract with the Freedom Park developers. That should not be the point.

By agreeing on the record that the $20 million would be used to increase green space across Miami, they made a promise to voters. City leaders should keep their words instead of looking for ways to undo decisions that are no longer convenient for some.

On Thursday, the Miami City Commission should say “no” to this type of bait and switch.

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