City embraces Beckham’s vision After visit from soccer legend, Fort Lauderdale moves toward Lockhart Stadium revival
FORT LAUDERDALE – The city of Fort Lauderdale embraced soccer legend David Beckham’s vision for Lockhart Stadium, taking the first step Tuesday toward a soccer revival for the storied property.
“It’s a great day for Fort Lauderdale,” Commissioner Ben Sorensen said, citing the multimillion-dollar private investment that will energize the Lockhart campus with professional athletes, young players-in-training, families and fans.
The deal will bring a new public park — and possibly a community center — to the city’s northern end, Commissioner Heather Moraitis said. And it could allow the return of local high school football games. Beckham’s Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami CF, will play its inaugural season there next year.
“This is an important moment for the community we serve,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said before kicking off the three-hour afternoon discussion. “Today is the moment of truth.”
The city has been working for years now to breathe new life into the 64-acre property — one of the city’s largest unused tracts. Speaker after speaker, many from the world of soccer as fans, business people or players, urged the city to team up with Miami Beckham United, over rival FXE Futbol. They cited the international brand, financial wherewithal and plans for developing young soccer players.
“Inter Miami is dealing you people a veritable royal flush,” former Fort Lauderdale Strikers
player Ray Hudson told commissioners.
Beckham’s Inter Miami team ultimately is expected to play in a new stadium in Miami, at the city’s Melreese Country Club golf course, but that effort has suffered multiple hiccups. Fort Lauderdale will remain the team’s training hub, with a Division 3 farm team, youth academy, and soccer clinics, as well as Inter Miami’s administrative offices.
“I believe Inter Miami has the resources to complete the project in one year,” Moraitis said. “I believe Inter Miami will be a benefit to our soccer community.”
Detractors argued unsuccessfully that Beckham came to Fort Lauderdale only after losing out on other potential stadium sites and experiencing roadblocks in Miami.
Derek Reese, an FXE Futbol supporter, told Fort Lauderdale commissioners they shouldn't hook up with a team carrying “Miami” in its name.
"We deserve better than to be someone’s second date to the prom,” he said.
Tuesday’s decision was just a first step. More public vetting will come. Commissioners unanimously ranked Miami Beckham United’s proposal No. 1, over FXE Futbol. The ranking was ratified with a unanimous vote Tuesday night.
Next, a detailed agreement will be negotiated for Inter Miami to use the city property, north of Commercial Boulevard and west of Interstate 95, for 50 years. The agreement will be evaluated by outside consultants, and publicly vetted in another City Commission public hearing and vote later this year.
Only then can construction begin.
“The minute you give us a permit, we’ll start moving dirt,” lawyer-lobbyist Stephanie Toothaker said.
Beckham wasn’t present at Tuesday’s meeting. But he visited Lockhart — and its weedy, abandoned field — last week, announcing that Inter Miami CF will play its first two seasons at Lockhart, starting next March.
“I think it’s the perfect location,” Beckham said Friday. “It’s the location we’ve been dreaming about.”
Miami Beckham United’s partners are David and Victoria Beckham, Jorge Mas and his brother, Jose Mas, of MasTech, a $7 billion engineering and construction company; Marcelo Claure and Masayoshi Son of SoftBank Group, and Simon Fuller, a TV producer and talent manager.
A key component of the Beckham-Mas proposal is a youth soccer academy — a competitive, traveling soccer team of the region’s best young players, Sports Director Paul McDonough said. The academy is free for players who are selected, he said.
For the public, four “pitches” — a regulation size soccer field that can be used for other sports — will be created, as well as a dog park, a running trail, playground and public park. The estimated investment, including new, $30 million stadium: up to $60 million.
Inter Miami has already submitted its application for a USL Division 3, League One team that would play at Lockhart and act as a farm team. It will be branded with a “Fort Lauderdale” name, McDonough said when asked by the mayor.
The youth academy and USL team are for men only. But McDonough said he’s had a discussion with the biggest female youth academy in Broward about coming to the property. Also on the list of possibilities: professional lacrosse, rugby, a Drive Shack golf entertainment venue, and a restaurant.
Financial details and business plans were not part of Tuesday’s decision. That comes next, the mayor said.
“I still have nothing upon which to base a decision,” City Auditor John Herbst said Tuesday afternoon. “There is no detail.”
Jorge Mas said the stadium and adjacent Fort Lauderdale Stadium would be demolished within months, and construction on the new stadium — a prefabricated, steel, canopied structure with 18,000 seats and luxury suites — would begin in July. It would be complete next February, in time for the first game.
Mas highlighted his family’s “deep, embedded roots” in South Florida, starting with his parents fleeing there from Cuba in 1961, “looking for freedom.”
“It’s been our dream of being able to establish something for the youth of our community,” Mas said, telling commissioners and the crowd that “sports unites, and sports teaches. It builds, I think, great communities and great societies.”
Moraitis said she initially wanted the entire acreage for a park. But then she realized that $25 million the city might spend there, from the recently approved city parks bond, wouldn’t go far enough.
“We need more help,” Moraitis said. “It would be in the city’s best interest to find the right partner, that perfect marriage.”
Community activist Mary Fertig said it was paramount that Lockhart be open once again to local high schools for football games.
Jose Mas, Jorge Mas’s brother, said if stands are placed around one of the play fields, a “mini stadium” could be created for the local schools.
All members of the City Commission said their goal for the property was public access.
“To me, paramount is public land for public purpose,” Commissioner Steve Glassman said. “That is number one.”
“Public access. That’s the piece that matters to me the most,” Commissioner Robert McKinzie said.
“This is public land for public use,” Sorensen said. “I see this as a real melting pot, a place where we can have youth across the city come together.”
Glassman reminded the crowd that the city can “walk away” if negotiations fail, or could move on in that case to the second-ranked team. FXE Futbol proposed fielding a USL Championship soccer team that would be permanently based at a renovated Lockhart Stadium. That proposal included a golf entertainment venue — possibly Topgolf — and a retail-restaurant complex.
After the vote, FXE Futbol CEO JP Reynal puffed on a cigarette outside City Hall, saying he wasn’t sure if he’d formally object. One of his lawyer-lobbyists, former state Sen. Ellyn Bogdanoff, kicked off Tuesday’s deliberations by complaining the city wasn’t following the proper process and shouldn’t be making a decision at the afternoon conference meeting. (The city attorney disagreed.) Reynal said he felt he was “being rushed to make decisions.”
“I believe Inter Miami has the resources to complete the project in one year. I believe Inter Miami will be a benefit to our soccer community.” —Heather Moraitis, Fort Lauderdale commissioner