May 28, 2007
Dade County to fill Marlins stadium gap with delicious nougat?
I've been waiting for something meatier to be reported on this before posting here, but I guess I'll just pass along the same vague rumors that the blogs are: Some Miami-Dade County commissioners, according to South Florida Sun-Sentinel sports business writer Sarah Talalay, are considering building a Florida Marlins stadium without state money. This would resolve the years-long standoff with the state legislature, which has resisted kicking in the final $30 million in stadium funding via sales tax rebates. Instead, the county would supply the missing funds with... with...
Okay, Talalay didn't actually say where the missing funds would come from, though she did note that commissioner Carlos Gimenez suggested the $30 million gap "could be bridged by value engineering or some other method." (It's left to the reader's imagination what that other method might be.)
Apparently all that really happened last week is that the county commission's airport and tourism committee approved a resolution that if the county funds the stadium, the team would need to change its name to the Miami Marlins and move its spring-training home to the county-built stadium in Homestead. Marlins officials, according to Miami Today, were "poker-faced" about the proposal. Given that they're left with the same funding gap, not to mention the same dispute over the stadium site, I'm surprised they bothered even looking up from their cards.
