Dolphins celebrate grand opening of new state-of-the-art training complex in Miami Gardens
When Miami Dolphins personnel toured the team’s new training complex in Miami Gardens last month, Dolphins owner Stephen Ross celebrated the occasion by putting one of the building’s trademark features to use. Wearing a button-down collared shirt and dress pants, Ross went down the slide inside the Dolphins’ new weight room.
On Tuesday afternoon for the grand opening of the Baptist Health Training Complex in Miami Gardens, Ross did not go down the slide. But he stood on stage inside the team’s new indoor practice facility and labeled the milestone “a dream come true” in front of 15 former Dolphins players, head coach Brian Flores, team employees, county and city officials, among others.
The Dolphins’ new state-of-the art facility is adjacent and very close to Hard Rock Stadium, with the windows of the team’s meeting room offering a view of the team’s home stadium. Ross spent about $135 million to create the complex, with work beginning on the project in August 2019.
Moss Construction was in charge of building the complex, Rockwell Group designed the interiors and ROSSETTI took care of the architecture.
“When I bought the football team, one of the things I said was we want to do as much with the community as we possibly can, and we want to be the best in class in the NFL and we want to win the Super Bowl,” Ross said on stage at the event. “Well, I think we’re two-thirds of the way there.”
The Dolphins’ new home will be busy in the coming days, with players scheduled to report for training camp on July 27 and practices beginning soon after. It will mark the first training camp at its new headquarters, as the team has been been operated out of Nova Southeastern in Davie since 1993.
The move will represent an upgrade for the Dolphins.
First, the new facility is located right next to Hard Rock Stadium. The Dolphins’ former headquarters in Davie stood 11 miles north of its home stadium.
The new 217,200 square-foot complex is also more than 50,000 square feet larger than the team’s old Davie facility.
In addition, the new complex features a state-of-the-art hydrotherapy area, a dedicated recovery area that includes cryotherapy and isolation tanks, an athletic training room with rehabilitation space, meeting rooms with direct access to the fields, a two-story weight room with a cardio deck that includes a 30-foot slide to get from the second to the first floor, locker rooms, a players lounge, a barber shop, equipment space, a dining hall, an auditorium, an outdoor practice area with two full natural grass fields and a full indoor practice facility.
“I remember being in my interview with the Dolphins,” Flores, who was hired as the Dolphins’ head coach in February 2019, said on stage at Tuesday’s event. “The interview is going, and we’re talking about offense, defense, special teams, management philosophy, nutrition, medical. And then [Dolphins CEO Tom Garfinkel] pulls out the blueprint for this facility. We can talk football all day. But architecture and design aren’t necessarily my forte. ... But they had a vision that day for this facility, for this team and today is the realization of that vision.”
Among the former Dolphins players in attendance for Tuesday’s grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony were Nat Moore, Jason Taylor, Dan Marino, Dick Anderson, Larry Little, Dwight Stephenson, Pat Surtain and O.J. McDuffie.
“If Zach Thomas was playing in this building now, he would never leave,” McDuffie said to reporters at the event. “Because Zach never left the facility in Davie. He would never leave with all the state-of-the-art equipment in terms of the hot tubs, the weight room. But not only that, to be able to watch film the way he does and the way they have it over here. It’s second to none. I hope these guys take advantage of every opportunity that Mr. Ross and the Dolphins are giving them here.”
Fans will soon be able to see the Dolphins’ new training complex in person. With training camp beginning later this month, fans will be welcome to attend and watch 13 of the practice sessions.
It is free to attend the practices, but fans are required to reserve tickets ahead of time through Ticketmaster. The list of open practices, with every session set for 10:10 a.m., includes July 31, Aug. 2, Aug. 3, Aug. 4, Aug. 6, Aug. 7, Aug. 17, Aug. 18, Aug. 19, Aug. 24, Aug. 25, Aug. 26 and Aug. 27.
There are 2,200 shaded spectator seats around the Dolphins’ new practice fields.
This will mark the first year that the Dolphins hold training camp at the impressive Baptist Health Training Complex, but it’s not the first time they have trained in Miami Gardens. The Dolphins called St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens their training camp home from 1970 to 1992.
“There is no comparison,” McDuffie said when asked to compare the team’s new complex to the one used at St. Thomas University. “I was only at St. Thomas for a minicamp, thank goodness. But you know what, you still noticed all the history at St. Thomas. They won Super Bowls in St. Thomas. They won a lot of AFC Championship Games at St. Thomas. A lot of success. They weren’t really caring about facilities as much, obviously with the way it looked.
“But I’ll tell you what, man, this right here. Even compared to Davie, I thought Davie was state of the art when I got there. This blows it out of the water.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 5:19 PM.
