Seek more for public after decades of arena lands neglect

In a too-little, too-late deal, Miami-Dade is now enroute to 60% of the bayfront open space that we were promised in construction of a basketball arena three decades ago.

A deal for a Miami Heat arena in the heart of Miami in which the Heat is the prime beneficiary set aside 4.5 acres for public uses developed by the team. Renderings that sold the plan to the public showed soccer fields and a baywalk. 

Instead, a Heat affiliate fenced off the land much of the time and used it as a staging area for arena events.

Now, as the Heat seeks to renew its sweetheart arena lease, it’s in talks about allowing the county, not the Heat, to create a plaza on the bay using 2.76 acres of the county’s own land, with the Heat then paving over almost two acres of remaining so-called public space for permanent arena use.

Meanwhile the county, facing a $400 million budget gap, says it hasn’t a penny to actually create the green plaza on the remainder of the site it owns that has never been used by the public.

The facts, though shocking, aren’t unique. Mistreatment of public green space at stadiums, arenas and sports venues in Miami-Dade shows a pattern of misleading the public by promising green that often winds up in wallets rather than on the ground.

The City of Miami pulled such a bait-and-switch with soccer fields around Miami Marine Stadium.

In 2015, city commissioners saw colorful renderings of four side-by-side soccer fields on a new flex park beside the marine stadium. Then they OK’d more than $20 million to create a park, including a new hard surface to be topped by astroturf for soccer fields and acres of elaborate tents for exhibitions that would share the land with the fields.

Shows came and went, but a decade later soccer fields remain dreams. By 2016, the administration was saying it couldn’t actually create soccer fields over the paved surface. “Astroturf will not work,” said City Manager Daniel Alfonso.

That upset city commission Chairman Keon Hardemon, who said the soccer fields were “part of the deal” to pave the area. “If not for this, there may not have been a flex park,” he said.

“Was the space ever evaluated” as to what could actually be constructed there, Mr. Hardemon asked. Yes, said Mr. Alfonso, but “things came up.” Green space, however, never came up.

Now Mr. Hardemon, as a county commissioner, has convinced the county to approve a new concept to create part of the green space promised in the 1990s at the basketball arena.

Another example: When the City of Miami turned over Melreese Golf Course to use for office buildings, a hotel, garages and a soccer stadium near Miami International Airport, the public was told that some of the lost fairways would become park land. Turning fairways into a park should be faster than building a stadium, but no park is visible while the stadium is to open in just eight months. 

Original claims for Freedom Park were that the public could use soccer fields. At least one will exist – but inside the stadium for professional use. Will others appear faster than the green space behind the basketball arena?

The only stadium deal to keep its promise on soccer was the baseball stadium. Marlins owners drew a tight contract barring a soccer field near the ballpark without total Marlins control over when and how it could be used, a virtual guarantee of no nearby soccer.

The county is on track to keep another soccer promise: it pledged $46 million for FIFA World Cup matches next year. Despite a $402 million budget gap that is ending some county programs, the professional soccer windfall seems inviolate.

That’s indicative of how we venerate sports, where deals trump good stewardship of public assets. Elected officials seem quite willing to be bamboozled in sports deals.

A 2012 inspector general’s report questioned multiple aspects of the deal with Heat owners and Basketball Properties Ltd., the Heat’s operating arm for the arena, but it did not examine the 4.5 acres behind the arena where the Heat had pledged to create a soccer park and baywalk. 

That promise came in 1996 in the lead-up to a referendum on arena construction, yet the county never required the team to commit to that park promise. But sports franchises can do no wrong. 

“Miami is a Miami Heat town,” Mr. Hardemon told commissioners this month in promoting a new deal for the space behind the arena. “We have a responsibility of providing world-class sports so we can have world-class tourism in our community.”

That’s the argument most of the time: teams put Miami on the map. We must support them economically. Elected officials either believe that or pretend to. As sports fans they’re allowed to fantasize. But as elected officials their allegiance should be to taxpayers, not teams.

Sports hero-worshipping has cost the public three decades of waterfront park use and if remedied is only going to give us 60% of what we were promised then and make the public pay for improvements the Heat pledged to provide. Too little, too late. Cut a better deal.