Team breaks ground on $135M training complex
Miami Gardens facility expected to be finished in 2021
MIAMI GARDENS Thirteen miles drove Tom Garfinkel crazy for six years.
Anytime the Miami Dolphins CEO needed to go to the football side of the organization he’d have to jump on the Turnpike and head north to Davie to handle business.
The fact that the Dolphins had to build portables outside their Davie facility to house the analytics department, and the team’s sleep chambers, and needs to borrow Nova Southeastern University pool to assist in the rehabilitation of injured players never sat well with Garkinkel, or Dolphins owner Steve Ross.
On Wednesday, the Dolphins finally did something about the team’s outdated football hub, and the separation of the football and business side of South Florida’s NFL franchise by breaking ground on a new $135 million state-of-theart training complex and sports performance clinic that will be located in Miami Gardens. The plan is for the complex, which will be 125,000 square feet, to be completed in 2021, likely before training camp opens that July.
The facility, which will also house a new 30,000 square foot site for Miami’s Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute, is being built right next to Hard Rock Stadium.
“Buildings don’t win championships, but cultures and environments do, to some degree. Coaches and players certainly do,” said Garfinkel, who will lead the franchise’s third major building project in Miami Gardens. “If we can support the coaches and players with a better environment to work in, a more efficient environment to work in, one with more resources around them, it can only be a good thing.”
This training facility, which will span 20 acres and features three fields (one indoor), meeting rooms, locker rooms and offices for the football teams, follows the $600 million renovation of Hard Rock Stadium, and the creation of the tennis complex that houses the Miami Open. All of those projects were privately funded by Ross, who skipped the ground breaking ceremony because of what Garfinkel called a scheduling conflict.
“It’s 100 percent privately funded and built on private land,” Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said. The state-ofthe-art complex will be a boom to Miami-Dade job creation both during the construction phase and decades into the future as it helps us attract sporting events to our county.”
Gimenez is referring to Ross’ efforts to bring a Formula 1 Grand Prix race to Miami, possibly housing it in Miami Gardens, and doing what it takes to attract a 2026 World Cup game.
The thought process is that the complex will help Ross’ RSE Ventures, a private investment firm he owns that focuses on sports and entertainment projects, attract more major events.
It’s estimated that the complex will create at least 100 new jobs in Miami Gardens, which is an inner city community located on the Dade and Broward country line.
The general public will have access to the Miami’s Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute being built on the property.
“We think this is a growing area and we wanted to be here. We wanted to provide access to the community to world class physicians,” said Nelson Lazo, and CEO of Doctors Hospital and Miami’s Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Institute. “We want to provide our services to everyone in this community, not just the Dolphins. Anybody can come here see our doctors, have diagnostics and rehabilitation.”
The land the project is being built on was used as a parking lot for Hard Rock Stadium, but Garfinkel said there will be more than enough parking left for those attending sporting events and concerts because the capacity of the stadium had been decreased when it was renovated.
The Dolphins’ training headquarters have been at Nova Southeastern since 1993, moving there from St. Thomas University, where the team had practiced for more than two decades.
According to Garfinkel, the Dolphins felt it was necessary to keep up with the rest of the league’s facilities, which provide far more space and amenities for players and coaches. And he pointed out some Dolphins players come from college programs that had better football facilities than the Dolphins.
“The indoor practice facility will be a game changer even though we like to practice out in the sun,” Garfinkel said. “Everything is the right size for what we need, the locker room, the training room. The biggest game changer will be having the medical facility right on site. Right now if we need to go take an MRI. We have to borrow Nova’s under water treadmill. We’ll have the underwater treadmill right on site. We’ll have the MRI [machines] on site so this will make it more convenient for the players.”