Miami Freedom Park Will Bring Jobs, Parks and World Class Soccer

Parties don’t trust their voters; voters don’t trust their parties
Grant Miller

This November, the voters of the city of Miami will have an opportunity to transform one of the City’s least performing assets – the current site that is occupied by the Melreese Golf Country Club – into a unique destination for all Miami and South Florida residents, not just the ones who pay to play golf. If approved, Miami Freedom Park will be the home of Miami’s new MLS Professional Soccer team, and will also provide a number of benefits to the City of Miami and beyond.

Miami Freedom Park promises to be not only the home to world class soccer, but also a commercial and entertainment center that will house technology companies, hotels and restaurants, green spaces and sports fields and many other amenities. This initiative, led by international soccer superstar David Beckham and Miami businessman and entrepreneur Jorge Mas, will create over 13,000 high paying jobs and generate more than $40 million in new tax revenues for the City of Miami, the State of Florida, Miami Dade County and Miami Dade County Schools. The state-of-the-art Soccer stadium and the public soccer facilities will be privately funded and will not cost taxpayers. The land that will be occupied by Miami Freedom Park will be leased from the City of Miami at a fair market value of nearly $4 million per year with a $20 million contribution for a new 58-acre public park.

What is truly exciting and so unique about Miami Freedom Park is that it will have something to offer to all of us. From the soccer mom who wants a safe and ideal place for her children to play, to the recent graduate looking to start a career in the tech industry and participate in the new economy, to the die-hard soccer fan wanting to cheer on Miami’s team and enjoy watching some of the great soccer players, to the families looking for a beautiful scenic park to enjoy a picnic outdoors. A global city like ours deserves a world class facility such as what Miami Freedom Park has the potential to be. If there was ever a win-win for Miami, Miami Freedom Park scores a clean goal for our City, our residents and our future.


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8 COMMENTS

  1. NO on Ref. 1!
    Lets get the word out there.

    Ricardo Barrios
    Meetup.com – Miami Environmentalists & Environmentalist Entrepreneurs
    3058157202
    Fighting for our environemnt
    join the cause

  2. Michael Lewis, publisher of Miami Today is a rare voice of reason in South Florida.

    Below is an editorial he published regarding the Melreese Golf Course deal. Please vote no on this awful deal.

    https://www.miamitodaynews.com/2018/10/23/save-miamis-vital-green-space-from-one-sided-giveaway/

    Save Miami’s vital green space from one-sided giveaway

    Michael Lewis
    Written on October 23, 2018

    Save Miami’s vital green space from one-sided giveaway
    Miamians will vote Nov. 6 whether to convert a swath of city parkland into a massive mixed-use private complex in a no-bid sweetheart deal that would close the only golf course in city limits. They should say no.

    Ironically, a key reason the city handed voters this hot potato is that rent and taxes from the developer could help Miami pay damages it may well face in a former green space giveaway to a developer, that one on Watson Island.

    Miami Freedom Park LLC parachuted into city hall uninvited seeking Melreese golf course to develop at least 1 million square feet of offices plus 600,000 square feet of retail, at least 750 hotel rooms, parking for 3,750 cars and a soccer stadium. Those are minimums, not maximums – space aplenty could house far more.

    The soccer stadium is the shiny lure to hook voters, though it’s a small slice of the project, which is really a real estate and development play on city land.

    Though voters should want soccer, they also should turn this down. The team that plans to play there can find other sites – in fact, it bought another site in Miami before this offer, and stadiums here do host soccer. But there will never be another Miami golf course, because that much land is scarce and public golf isn’t profitable, any more than other green space turns profits.

    Cities of quality offer amenities that private enterprises don’t. We pay taxes for police and fire, but also for green space and a nice urban environment. Once commissioners start demanding profit from public welfare and amenities, we’re lost.

    Where could Miami ever find enough land in city limits to replace this Melreese course?

    Miami is no golf vacation destination, but numerous golf bags arrive at Miami International Airport with luggage for those who do find in golf an added reason to visit. Those casual golfers don’t play at country clubs here; they rely on our region’s few public courses like Melreese.

    One city commissioner insists Melreese is a country club, and the ballot question says that, but country clubs can cost $85,000 or more to join, whereas anyone can play Melreese in an electric cart for $54, about the cost of a double feature at a luxury theater. Its patrons are among our region’s most diverse.

    It’s also the only course in city limits – Miami sold its other one to developers years ago. Lose Melreese and we’d probably be the largest city without golf in a nation of 13,700 courses. That wouldn’t play well to visitors. Even now, Golf magazine lists us 38th in the nation for golfing. We should be number one for year-around golf.

    Sports has coveted city parks before. The Marlins wanted to put a baseball stadium in what is now Museum Park. Instead, we got a park plus art and science museums. Baseball built elsewhere, just as soccer could.

    Melreese is not just 131 acres of greenery and recreation for many thousands of residents, it’s also a buffer for Miami International Airport, created when the city turned a dump into parkland. It’s smack under a key flight path where federal aviation rules limit building heights. Airport officials worry about the impact of any Melreese development on aviation, and the airport is Miami-Dade’s top economic engine.

    After aviation come traffic concerns. Plop a million or so square feet of offices plus retail and commercial and hotels across from the airport and traffic soars. We’d like impartial studies of this addition to the airport area before, not after, locking in development.

    The city also hasn’t shown studies on parkland that would remain after handing the bulk of the course to developers. The developers are to leave 58 acres of the public land for a park and to split $20 million into annual payments over 30 years to create and run the park. But how much would the city have to advance to build and operate the park, and would $20 million in today’s dollars cover the full eventual cost by 2048?

    The deal voters must evaluate is highly complex. The 75-word ballot language doesn’t inform us how the toxic waste below will be handled and what happens to taxpayers if developers don’t do it properly. It doesn’t list safeguards of the kind that would have prevented the potential legal fiasco in the city’s failed Watson Island marina-hotel complex deal.

    But most of all, it doesn’t tell voters how they’d ever get new land to replace the patrimony that the city would sell off. Nobody’s making more green space. The city needs to acquire green space, not get rid of it.

    Even if the city were to want to convert most of its golf course to concrete and steel, it should be seeking far more than $3.6 million a year rent where developers expect at least $425 million annual revenue – that’s right, only eight-tenths of one percent of the revenue to taxpayers.

    You wouldn’t make that deal; why should the city? Miami should not be in the “going out business sale” business.

    Even commissioners who put this plan on the ballot aren’t recommending it. Two of the five voted no, and one of the three who voted yes says he’s actually neutral and wants the voters to decide yes or no.

    Our concerns have nothing to do with either the soccer team or the development team. We wish David Beckham and Jorge Mas well. We like the concept of professional soccer and expect it to thrive here in the right site. We like proper mixed-use developments as valuable infrastructure in the right place.

    But the city’s only golf course in a vital flight path is not the right site. The low-rent deal is not the right deal. And the city’s method of shoving no-bid, unvetted deals before voters is not the right method of protecting city patrimony.

    It’s all wrong. Vote no.

  3. I’m in total agreement with Elvis and all above comments against the Miami Freedom Park Soccer Stadium. The Miami Freedom Park will be destroying a beautiful golf course, destroying the Grapeland Heights neighborhood, and causing extreme traffic jams.

    Once this is complete who is to say that Grapeland Heights Park on 1550 NW 37th Avenue will also be taken for private use. There will no longer be any green space. No more parks for public recreational use.

    Remember the names of the City Commissioners who voted to allow a referendum to turn public park land over to a private developer. They need to be voted out!

  4. I agree with Elvis Cruz and others who oppose this farce. This is yet another move by rich developers to rob the citizens of South Florida just like before. Let’s once again donate public property to a sports franchise so they can offset the costs of their organization and still make money when they can’t fill the seats in their stadium. What about the children,under privelaged, handicapped and others being served by the First Tee facility located at Melresse. Without the golf course this facility will also fail although golf is only a small component of this program. We don’t need any part of this offering.

  5. There are lots of good reasons why Miami voters should oppose the Mas/Beckham project, and Elvis Cruz hit on many of them. I’ll add a few more environmental issues to his list:

    ▪ The City of Miami already ranks among the lowest of all high-density cities in America for parkland as a percentage of city area, parks per capita, capital spending on parks, and similar measures
    ▪ That land is currently open, green space owned by and available to the public in perpetuity, whether or not the current golf course use is its best recreational or civic use
    ▪ The adjacent residential neighborhoods will be exposed to the effects of the required remediation of toxic incinerator residues which are currently safely contained beneath the golf course
    ▪ There is no specific plan for the toxic waste remediation, so no one can know how long it will take or what its local impacts may be
    ▪ The Mas/Beckham group’s proposal limits their contribution to the toxic waste remediation to $35 million, which is not nearly enough
    ▪ They propose securing the rest of the toxic waste remediation funds from state or federal monies which, if applied, would then become unavailable for more necessary and valuable remediation projects
    ▪ Traffic generated by the development, both on a regular basis and as associated with stadium and entertainment events, will make the environmental and other problems associated with existing traffic congestion in the airport area much worse
    ▪ The “leftover” 58 acres of green space not deeded to the Mas/Beckham group appear in renderings as a design element of the new development, poorly suited to real recreational use by City residents.

    It’s critical that voters of the City of Miami to get out on or before November 6, 2018, and to vote “no” on Municipal Referendum #1.

    Wayne Brody
    Board Member, Miami-Dade Democratic Environmental Caucus

  6. Grant,

    I have to agree with Elvis Cruz on this one. This is a massive retail shopping mall spun in fake news as a soccer stadium project. BTW, this golf course for many, many years has been formally named and universally acknowledged as International Links of Miami or International Links of Miami at Melreese.

    ONLY AFTER it was announced as the developers prime target did the media suddenly, dutifully, change it’s name in reporting from International Links to calling it Melreese Country Club. Proving once again perpetuating “class envy” remains a main tool of media to steer the masses opinions to where media decides they shall reside. Don’t be victimized by this choreographed narrative, folks. This is a media supported political and financial scam to pave over our already limited great outdoors with yet another massive mall.

  7. I agree with everything Elvis said.
    Sad to see community newspapers supporting this type of no-bid private development.

  8. Dear Mr. Miller,

    I was surprised to read your op-ed in favor of the Melreese golf course deal. I’ve read a number of your columns in the past, and they usually make sense, but this one reads like a press release from the developers.

    Here are some facts:

    A soccer stadium was used to start the behind-closed-door talks with the city, but that stadium is now only 10% of the deal. The other 90% is an office tower, a hotel, and a shopping mall. Is there a shortage of any of those things in Miami? Aren’t shopping malls all over the country closing because of on-line shopping?

    The developers include billionaires who can and should buy their own private land for a stadium, not take over our public park land.

    Shame on the City Commissioners (Ken Russell, Joe Carollo and Keon Hardemon) who voted to allow a referendum to turn public park land over to a private developer.

    The billionaire developer’s PR machine has already cranked up to manipulate the voters into allowing a sweetheart deal that is not in the public interest.

    Miami bills itself as a “World Class City”, whatever that means, but it doesn’t protect its own park land. A World Class City should protect its parks as sacred ground, and have a golf course.

    Make no mistake, this is indeed park land, as the city documented in its Parks Master Plan, chapter 3, pages 27 and 33: http://www.miamigov.com/parks/docs/masterplan/Miami_03.pdf

    Miami has supposedly been trying to increase the amount of park land in the City for years, but now it wants to lease away 73 acres to private developers for 99 years. That’s 8.2% of the 882 total acres of park land in the City.

    The golf course has been there since at least the early 1960s. If it is suddenly one of the City’s “least performing assets”, as you stated, isn’t ALL park land a low performing asset? Parks, like libraries, aren’t supposed to be profit-making ventures.

    Isn’t the whole idea of park land to provide an escape from commercialism?

    If this is allowed to happen, no City of Miami park is safe. Should there be office towers in Peacock Park? A hotel in Bayfront Park? A shopping mall in Merrie Christmas Park?

    If the City of Miami no longer wants that land to be a golf course, it should turn ALL of it into a big, glorious, wonderful park. Why isn’t that on the ballot?

    If the City wants to put public land out for private development, why isn’t it going to the highest bidder? This deal is supposedly “fair market value”? How can anyone be sure without competitive bidding?

    If the City of Miami needs to start monetizing parks to stay afloat financially, what has it been doing with all the money from the enormous building boom of the last 15 years?

    And what will it do when it runs out of public parks to monetize?

    Elvis Cruz
    631 NE 57 Street
    Miami, FL 33137
    305 754 1420
    ElvisCruz@mac.com

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