Talks can begin on Miami stadium
the negotiations
Let 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 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 that 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. The disclosure revealed that Mas was the sole owner of 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 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, lobbyists and principals behind the soccer team failed to disclose the ownership of the company which 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. St. Louis at Boston, 7 New Jersey vs. N.Y. Islanders at Nassau Coliseum, 7 Chicago at N.Y. Rangers, 7 Toronto at Tampa Bay, 7:30 Anaheim at Minnesota, 8 Winnipeg at Nashville, 8 Los Angeles at Dallas, 8:30
Montreal at Columbus, 7 Toronto at Florida, 7 Ottawa at Carolina, 7:30 N.Y. Islanders at
Washington, 7:30
World Cup off for September 2020
The NHL and NHL Players’ Association have given up on the possibility of staging the next World Cup of Hockey in September 2020.
The league and PA announced that conclusion in separate statements Wednesday. The sides met earlier in the day in Toronto to discuss the World Cup as part of collective bargaining talks after meeting last week in Las Vegas.
Not holding the World Cup in September 2020 is consequential because it was tied to the potential of labor peace in hockey. Owners or players could choose this September to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement and end it Sept. 15, 2020.
The current CBA runs until 2022 unless one side chooses to terminate it early.
In the statements, the NHL and NHLPA each said dialogue would continue and the hope is to hold another World Cup at some point.
The league suspended Canadiens F Paul Byron three games without pay for charging Panthers D MacKenzie Weegar during Tuesday night’s game. The suspension will cost Byron $18,817.
AP