GOLAZO! Inter Miami gets green light on new stadium, UM football could end up there, too
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Soccer stadium deal
After a nine-year odyssey, retired footballer David Beckham scored a key victory Thursday when Miami commissioners voted 4-1 to lease 73 acres of city-owned land for a Major League Soccer stadium and commercial center, a massive complex that will host home games for Inter Miami.
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Inter Miami players Victor Ulloa and Damion Lowe got a lengthy civics lesson on Thursday afternoon, as they were among the members of the audience in a packed Miami City Hall chamber as the city commission debated for six hours and eventually voted 4-1 to green-light the team’s proposed $1 billion Miami Freedom Park stadium project.
The MLS club, which is co-owned by David Beckham and Miami brothers Jorge and Jose Mas, was launched three years ago in Fort Lauderdale with the understanding that the team would eventually move to Miami, which was the league’s condition when Beckham’s quest for a team began eight years ago.
After years of political in-fighting and delays, the commission voted to give the Inter Miami group the go-ahead to build the project on the site of the Melreese Golf Course adjacent to Miami International Airport. It will include a 25,000-seat stadium, 750 hotel rooms, office and retail space, and a 58-acre park that would include public soccer fields.
The Mas brothers’ goal is to have the stadium built by March 2025 for the start of that MLS season.
“Viva Miami! Viva Inter Miami!” Jorge Mas shouted at a press conference after the vote. “An amazing day for the voters of our city, for the fans of futbol and Inter Miami…I always knew this would happen because I believe in this city, and I believe in dreaming. Today a dream commences of taking a site which I played baseball on as a young man and transforming that into the centerpiece of futbol in the world where every resident of this city can enjoy themselves. We’re going to make sure the fans of Inter Miami have their team where it rightly belongs, in their city.”
Cesar Molero, a diehard Inter Miami supporter who lives three blocks from the new stadium site, celebrated the vote with other fans at the meeting.
“This is a Miami team, we’ve been promised from the beginning that we’re going to have a team here in Miami, Fort Lauderdale’s been great to us, but the journey begins now,” Molero said. “This is something we’ve been passionately pushing for. Many meetings, late nights, emails and calls to commissioners, and here we are. We finally got it! Let’s go!”
By 11 p.m., a group of Inter Miami fans had gathered at the site of the proposed stadium, and were singing and banging drums.
One new wrinkle that came up in the meeting was commissioner Joe Carollo’s request that the Mas brothers, who are heavily involved with the University of Miami athletic department, explore with the school the possibility of the Hurricanes football team playing at the proposed stadium. He suggested that the stadium would probably have to be increased to up to 40,000 seats to house the football games.
The Hurricanes are under contract to play at Hard Rock Stadium through 2033.
“I think it is a brilliant idea and my brother and I will discuss it [with UM] over the next 90 days,” Mas said. “It’s my alma mater, my brother’s, my son’s, our whole family. We’ve been very engaged with the football program for the last few months. There is nothing that I’d be more proud of than Inter Miami playing in Miami Freedom Park stadium and having the Miami Hurricanes there.”
From the moment MLS kicked off 25 years ago the league’s goal has been to have a team in the Miami city limits that would cater to the soccer-crazed melting pot population and become a bilingual global brand that would extend the league’s reach into South and Central America and the Caribbean.
The idea was to get fans from those regions to adopt the Miami team as their U.S. based team, buy team merchandise, watch games on TV, get to know the league, see beautiful views of the city skyline and travel to Miami to watch MLS games in person.
Shortly after the vote, MLS commissioner Don Garber posted on Twitter: “Get ready, Inter Miami fans! Congrats to Jorge Mas and Jose Mas, David Beckham and everyone who worked so hard these past years to bring a world-class soccer stadium to a world-class city!”
Inter Miami chief soccer officer and sporting director Chris Henderson hugged other staff members at City Hall when the votes were announced.
“This is super special to see, it’s about how the club and players can form a bond with the Miami community,” Henderson said. “Miami will connect Inter Miami with the world. It’s a global city. It has people from everywhere who have come here and I think for all of South Florida to have the team in Miami and start the project that the Mas brothers and David Beckham envisioned from the very beginning, it’s something we can build on.”
After hearing passionate pleas for the project from Mayor Francis Suarez, who called it “the best sports deal in America” and Jorge Mas, the commission heard from members of the public.
Among the people who spoke was Inter Miami fan diehard fan Bernard Toledo, a Miami resident, teacher at Booker T. Washington High School, and a member of the team’s Vice City 1896 supporters club.
“When Commissioner Russell originally said, ‘No,’ my whole world turned upside down,” Toledo said about the initial vote, in which Ken Russell voted no before agreeing to the deal after some concessions by Mas’ group. “I was very nervous, so when I heard the four yesses, it was like a mountain coming off my back. It was euphoric. I wish I could bottle up that feeling and sell it to someone.”
This story was originally published April 28, 2022 at 9:55 PM.
