Negotiations can begin on Miami MLS stadium.
Let the negotiations begin.
Miami administrators will now begin hashing out the details of a 99-year lease with Jorge Mas, chairman of infrastructure giant MasTec and one of the investors in the Miami’s upcoming Major League Soccer expansion team, after Miami-Dade ethics officials gave the city the green light Wednesday. The county ethics commission sent a letter to the city Wednesday morning advising the the issue regarding lobbyists’ registrations had been resolved.
Jose Arrojo, executive director of the MiamiDade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, confirmed that lobbyists involved in the soccer stadium deal had fulfilled their registration requirement in a letter to Miami City Attorney Victoria Mendez. The complaint remains open, but the city can begin negotiating the lease under the broad terms approved by voters in the November referendum.
Now the city will negotiate with a company that is solely owned by Mas, a fact first reported by the Miami Herald last week. The disclosure revealed that Mas was the sole owner of the the corporation formed to negotiate the lease, Miami Freedom Park LLC — the company listed on the November ballot question. David Beckham, the soccer star and longtime face of the effort to bring MLS to Miami, is not listed as a principal in the business entity that would hold the lease of Melreese.
Beckham, Sprint chairman Marcelo Claure, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Mas’ brother, Jose Mas, all own stakes in a different corporation that owns the rights to field an MLS team in Miami, Miami Beckham United LLC. Under MLS’ structure, the league owns the teams and investor groups own the rights to operate teams.
On Wednesday, an attorney representing Mas told the Miami Herald that Mas is contractually bound to include Beckham and the investors in the MLS team in the ownership of Miami Freedom Park later on. Attorney Richard Perez said Mas’ sole ownership of Miami Freedom Park LLC was a “corporate formality” and that Mas will be required to share opportunities such as the Freedom Park deal with his MLS partners.
City Manager Emilio Gonzalez and his staff plan to work with Mas on a document that will outline the terms under which Melreese golf course, located on 131 acres of public land next to Miami International Airport, will be radically transformed into Miami Freedom Park — a $1 billion private development that would include a 25,000 seat stadium in a 10-acre corner of the property that would serve as home to Club Internacional de Fútbol de Miami, or Inter Miami.
Last year, in the run-up to a ballot question asking voters to endorse the framework of a lease, lobbyists and principals behind the soccer team failed to disclose the ownership of the company who would lease 73 acres of the property to a private group for a soccer stadium, soccer fields, and commercial complex of hotels, retail and office space. The group has pledged to redevelop a portion of the land into a 58-acre public park.
Those disclosures were made late last week after pressure from the ethics commission and the city — disclosures that are legally required for everyone who registers to lobby but do not appear to be enforced in the city. Officials from the soccer group insisted they were being treated unfairly.
Multiple Miami commissioners and administrators did not know the distinction between corporations involved in the proposal when a majority of the commission voted to hold the referendum, which passed with 60 percent approval in November.
The lack of clarity on who owns what upset Commissioner Manolo Reyes, who along with Commissioner Willy Gort voted against putting the question on the ballot. Reyes told the Herald Tuesday he was under the impression that Beckham, Son and Claure were all partners on the whole deal, including the development of the city’s real estate.
“That’s why I voted against it. There was no transparency,” Reyes said.