Debt on Marlins baseball stadium limits county’s future aims

Written by Miami Today on June 24, 2026

A Miami-Dade commissioner last week sought details of where the county stands in repaying bonds that built the Marlins baseball stadium that opened in April 2012 and whose debt runs to 2049. Total stadium costs approach $3 billion.

“I hope at some point you give us a report, especially now that times are going to be fiscally tough, on where we are in repaying that ridiculous debt,” Juan Carlos Bermudez told budget director Ray Baker during a meeting.

The debt, Mr. Bermudez said, “limits a lot of the things we can do in the future…. At the very least, we need to know where we are.”

Mr. Baker, who was unprepared for the question, did not respond. But when commissioners asked in 2009 about what ballpark debt costs would be in the future they did not receive responses until days after they approved them. The word billion was never mentioned.

The three bond issues that financed the stadium had different structures. The garages were financed by the City of Miami, which had its own borrowing structure.

The most costly bonds yielded just over $80 million for stadium construction and were to be repaid by bed tax revenue at 8.2% interest. They were to be repaid in very small increments, beginning at $2.6 million per year, and then gradually increase until 2038, when repayment would balloon to over $105 million yearly until it peaked at more than $143 million in 2044 alone for the original $80 million. The total repayment was to be more than $1.2 billion.

About $319.2 million was issued in bonds to be repaid from professional sports tax revenues. The interest on those bonds was 6.39% and they would cost about $1.3 billion when repaid by 2049.

A $50 million general obligation bond issue was also sold with estimated repayment of about $200 million. The total for all county bond repayments was thus about $2.7 billion.

Said Mr. Bermudez, “The Marlins stadium was one of the greatest fiascos of the county’s history.”