Tone-deaf billionaire owner of Miami Dolphins looks for Broward County tax money -$225 M- to renovate (his own) stadium. Sure, how much do you need?

My comments follow this very thorough story by the Sun-Sentinel's Scott Wyman and Co.

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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/fl-broward-stadium-dolphins-20110105,0,5932754.story

South Florida Sun-Sentinel'
Dolphins look for Broward aid to renovate Sun Life Stadium stadium
By Scott Wyman, Sun Sentinel
9:07 PM EST, January 5, 2011

The Miami Dolphins want Broward County to share its tourism tax revenue to help pay for a $225 million renovation to its stadium in Miami-Dade.

Dolphins CEO Mike Dee has been meeting with area hoteliers, business executives and tourism officials to pitch the idea of rewriting state law to allow Broward to spend its tax money outside the county. The Dolphins argue that Broward has benefited heavily from past Super Bowls at the Miami-Dade venue and that a new stadium would help ensure their return in the future.

Broward played host to the Super Bowl headquarters in 2010. That game, along with the subsequent Pro Bowl, generated $333 million for South Florida businesses. Dee said a renovated stadium could add about $2.5 billion to the South Florida economy through 2040.

"This is a community decision," said Dee, who publicly unveiled the idea in a speech Wednesday at a Miami chamber of commerce lunch. "This is about the ability to continue to bring big-time events to the community."

Although South Florida has been home to both the 2010 and the 2007 Super Bowls, the chance at more games has been in doubt because of the condition of the 23-year-old Sun Life Stadium. NFL officials have made clear that while they enjoyed the area's amenities, that is not enough to return. Newer and fancier venues have been chosen for future games.

The Dolphins last year unveiled plans for a renovated stadium that include a partial roof over the seating area and seats closer to the action. But after spending $300 million on stadium upgrades over the past six years, the team has maintained that it cannot make the investment by itself.

Broward County commissioners, who control the tax dollars that tourists pay to stay at hotels, reacted skeptically to the Dolphins proposal. Broward and Miami-Dade have flirted with cooperation on sports venues before to no avail.

Commissioners said that Broward has many needs of its own for the tax dollars, which already go to promote tourism and pay for the debt on the construction of the BankAtlantic Center in Sunrise. The tax money has been a key feature of plans to both expand the Broward County Convention Center and build a nearby hotel for convention-goers.

"There would have to be a lot of sweetener in the pot before I would even think about it," Broward Mayor Suzanne Gunzburger said.

Commissioner Lois Wexler said she opposes any additional use of tourism dollars to support professional sports teams. Meanwhile, Commissioner John Rodstrom, one of the primary architects behind the construction of the BankAtlantic Center, said he would want to see a significant sharing of revenue or taxation from the stadium in order consider a deal — even suggesting that the county line be moved to split the stadium.

"I'm willing to listen to any plan, but you have to put it into the context of the dollars that come out of it," Rodstrom said. "We're being asked to fund a stadium that is not in our county. We all recognize how important the Super Bowl is, and it would be good if we could get it every couple years. But we also have other needs in Broward."

The Dolphins have sought Miami-Dade hotel taxes for at least a year, but had not previously included Broward tax money in the plan. In another significant shift, Dee also is pledging Dolphins financial support for a stadium renovation.

Dee said the Dolphins want to pursue legislation that would allow counties to increase the hotel tax from the current maximum of 6 cents to 7 cents. The plan would then be for Miami-Dade to split its increased tax revenue between the stadium renovations and a rehab of its convention center. Broward currently charges a 5-cent hotel tax and also would be allowed to raise it and spend proceeds outside its jurisdiction.

The Dolphins plan is dividing the region's business community.

The head of the Greater Miami tourism bureau has not endorsed it, and city commissioners in Miami Beach have voted to oppose public funding for the football stadium. Sunrise Sports & Entertainment, the operators of the BankAtlantic Center, issued a strong statement Wednesday opposing the plan as well.

In his statement, Sunrise Sports president Michael Yormark said he believes the Dolphins intend to turn their stadium into a multipurpose entertainment facility that would then compete with his venue. "So their request is, in effect, to use Broward County tax dollars to help a privately owned Miami-Dade facility compete with a publicly owned facility in Broward County," he said.

Broward tourism czar Nicki Grossman, though, described the Dolphins proposal as tantalizing if it means Miami-Dade lands future Super Bowls. She said Broward hoteliers did the "lion's share" of business associated with the Super Bowl, and that the Dolphins training camp at Nova Southeastern University in Davie also pumps at least $15 million into the Broward economy.

Grossman, the president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau, said Broward hoteliers want Super Bowl 2015 in South Florida and that she understands that "in order to get a Super Bowl, the stadium has to be a major player.''

"What they need is a reason for Broward County to get into this game," Grossman said. "My reach into the hotel community says that our hoteliers really want to continue to be Super Bowl hosts, and Pro Bowl hosts."

Staff writer Brittany Wallman, Pro Sports Editor Joe Schwerdt and the Miami Herald contributed to this report.

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Ron Book is the lobbyist hired by Stephen Ross and the Dolphins on this Quixotic effort to fleece Broward County taxpayers.

Anyone who saw the embarrassing video 11 months ago of Greater FTL tourism czarina Nicki Grossman reacting to New York City being awarded the 2014 Super Bowl over South Florida and other candidate cities, knows what sort of silly sycophant she is for any corporate interest who'll tell her what she wants to hear.
In my opinion, she's an old-fashioned shill for hire.

When someone actually stumbled into telling the truth for a change about what happened in January, i.e. that the fix was in for NYC to be awarded the game, and that person was the Chair of South Florida's effort, influential Rodney Barretto,
http://www.southfloridasuperbowl.com/Host_Committee/Board_Of_Directors.html
predictably, Nicki Grossman acted just like the corporate puppet she is, and actually criticized HIM, not the shell-game that was perpetrated on them by the NFL at taxpayer's expense.

Surprise!

I know, I know, you don't have to tell me.
You're hoping for a snowy Super Bowl three years hence, too!

re SFRTA Transit Workshop in Miami-Dade on Nov. 14

Above is the information I've previously mentioned about the upcoming SFRTA/Tri-Rail Workshop in Miami-Dade County on Friday November 14th at the Miami-Dade Expressway office located at 3790 N.W. 21st Street, across the street from Tri-Rail’s Miami Airport Tri-Rail Station.

Workshops are scheduled to begin in the Boardroom at 8:30 a.m. and end around 12:30, and parking is available at the Tri-Rail lot across the street.

Information is available online at http://www.tri-rail.com/announcements.htm.

RSVP at (954) 788-7958

At the August 22 meeting of the SFRTA Governing Board, the professional staff was directed to plan transit workshops this fall in each of the three counties, to be followed by a "Regional Transit Summit" in January or February. The Palm Beach workshop has already been held.

The thought is that the workshops and summit will help build public momentum and support for transit in advance of the legislative session in Tallahassee.


I've already made some suggestions to some folks involved about being sure to schedule it at a time when the pols aren't too distracted by other events going on in the state where they hope to cop invites or comps to to attend, like the Daytona 500 on February 15th, the BCS Title game on January 8th, especially if the Gators are involved in the latter, as I still think they may against Texas, or, the Super Bowl in Tampa on February 1st. http://www.tampabaysuperbowl.com/

I expect that Gabriel and the folks at Transit Miami http://www.transitmiami.com/ will have a lot more to say about the workshop in Miami as the date draws near, but I did want to remind you all for the second time here that it is going to be happening within the next three weeks, so mark your calendars.

As I've expressed here more than a few times, I really wish that a TM-like grass roots organization had existed when I was growing-up down here to give the general public a lot more of a voice and a counter-weight to some of the bad decisions that were already being made regarding the Metrorail's future, since the Tri-Rail would make even more sense now if some of the places my friends and I then frequented, had possibilities of being integrated into a larger regional transit network.


When I'd come home from IU during the summer, and wanted to be able to get around sensibly and quickly, and not forever be in traffic jams on S. Dixie Highway, when I was living down near The Falls, I'd have gladly spent a few hours a week at an office somewhere, say near Dadeland or South Miami, working on strategy and outreach to make sure that the future routes in the county would be based on common sense, natural boundaries and social networking, to create more places where South Florida could interact in a relaxed atmosphere.


You know, at a minimum, be able to ride a transit system with a Metro that actually (and originally) connected MIA to the downtown area and the business/legal districts or sports arenas and stadiums, as is common sense in most other communities, but NOT the natural order of things down here.


Now that so many people who live down here have no knowledge of what the county's Metrorail was supposed to be like, or the original promises for expansion, it's easy to think that the area's inherent political apathy and backwardness were the principal reason the stations were placed where they were, rather than purely political, ethnic and labor-based decisions, back before there were single-member districts on the Dade County Commission.


Almost 13 months ago, on September 25th, back in simpler times, before the Herald's Larry Lebowitz opened so many people's eyes here with his week-long series by connecting the dots on past negligence and incompetency in Miami having real world consequences for this area's growth and sprawl, there was a Miami-Dade County Citizens Advisory Committee meeting titled "Orange Line, Phase II, North Corridor Metrorail Extension Preliminary Engineering Phase."

See http://www.miamidade.gov/transit/corridor/n_corridor/n_meeting_schedule.asp and http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida/stories/2007/09/10/daily39.html


Map of Orange Line is at: http://www.loopconsulting.com/projects/mdt/images/Map.jpg


That, of course, was the very line that was supposed to be finished in 2012 and, once finished, allow U-M students to get on the Metrorail near campus and go straight to the stadium formerly known as JRS, but which I've taken to calling Chez Huizenga for short.



(It's like the way people like me, i.e. traditionalists who know something about Dolphin owner Joe Robbie's many fights with the City of Miami in general and with Miami City Manager Cesar Odio in particular, who dared Robbie to leave -which I've described in my blog- still call the stadium in North Dade, Joe Robbie Stadium. Intentionally, to draw a distinction between what it originally represented, resolve and relief for Dolphin fans, and what it has become under Wayne Huizenga -a three-ring circus.)


NOT that this helpful bit of info about the Metrorail was EVER mentioned in any of the Herald or Sun-Sentinel articles or editorials before the move from the Orange Bowl was officially announced last year by U-M President Donna Shalala, nor mentioned by the local TV talking heads on the 6 and 11 o'clock news.

Maybe if the Daily Business Review had mentioned it, they'd have said so, since the local TV folks seem to really love stealing their material without attribution, where that seemed to be especially pronounced at WFOR, News4.


Thirteen months from now, I wonder what sort of things we will all know and accept as common knowledge about this area and the pols who are making such short-sighted transit decisions for the community's future growth.
Gist for another series for Larry?

This is, if nothing else, a target-rich environment!

In case you somehow missed it originally, after months of mind-numbing research, Larry gave
readers an exhaustive and cringe-worthy 'inside' look at Miami-Dade Transit issues, in his excellent front page series, one of the best the Herald has had.

With the help of interactive multi-media http://www.miamiherald.com/multimedia/news/transit/ he reveals in minute detail the hows and whys of the myriad broken promises made to voters and riders over the years, and connects-the-dots on the corruption, cronyism and political sleight-of-hand that have found such fertile ground here, even while transparency and accountability have not.

Sort of like so many promises and deadlines I've heard in Hallandale Beach since arriving here that have fallen by the wayside.