Now here’s a lede:
Despite what a commissioner called the “stench” of the Miami Marlins stadium deal, a majority of Miami-Dade county commissioners on Wednesday supported raising the bed tax on mainland hotels to support renovations of the Miami Dolphins‘ stadium.
What the commissioners actually voted for, 7-4, was a nonbinding resolution asking the state to raise the county hotel-motel tax by 1%, which would supply around $9 million a year to be funneled into Dolphins stadium renovations. If the state approves it, then the county will have to vote again to actually collect and spend the money.
Still, it seems like the Dolphins’ “We’re not the Marlins” campaign is off to a good start. Which either shows that Miami elected officials don’t hold a grudge, or don’t learn from their mistakes, depending on your perspective.
While there has been a lot of discussion about the funding sources for the proposed renovation, I have seen much of a critique of the planned upgrade.
Some things of note:
1) There are some really bad (really bad) seats planned for the lower level in the corners. It reminds me of the “baseball seats” at Candlestick when the football seat extension is rolled out. Of course, in this case there is no worry about baseball, so I wonder why they have seats whose views are blocked by other seats?
2) The lighting is greatly improved over the current lighting (but what wouldn’t be a great improvement?).
3) The roof (or awning) appears to be a completely separate unit since the current stadium probably could not hold the weight. The lack of any covering was always one of the big criticisms of Sun Life / Pro Robby. The covering also seems to extend outside of the stadium and hopefully they included plenty of ways to catch the torrential rains before it roll off the awnings onto the fans.
4) And speaking of the roof, does that design remind anyone else of a giant version of the main Wimbleton court? In which case, does this mean in 5 years the good citizens of Miami-Dade can expect a request for a retractable center cover so they could have a completely covered stadium and bring in even more amazing dollars?
5) The first part of the video seems to show some of the lower level seats rolling towards the field. I have to wonder if this is a way to get a major league soccer team into Sun Life/Pro Robbie?