There’s a dividing line in Miami, a line represented by a mass of concrete that towers over the Rickenbacker Causeway. For those on one side of the line, the Miami Marine Stadium is a place of legends, a place of memories.
The stadium, built in 1963, was featured in an Elvis Presley movie in 1968. Boat races and swimming events took place in the manmade basin on which it was built, filling the 6,500 seats of the waterfront venue. Catholic masses were held there for recently arrived Cuban refugees. On a floating stage, Sammy Davis Jr. embraced President Richard Nixon there in 1972. Legendary bands like The Who and Queen played shows there. Jimmy Buffett famously dove into the water from a floating stage in a 1985 show.
For those on the other side of the line, the side of younger and more recently arrived Miamians, the Marine Stadium represents something very different.
The eye-popping modernist structure is riddled with graffiti and fenced off, as it has been since it was abandoned by the city after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. To those people, the stadium represents a reminder of glory days that ended before they had a chance to partake. Decades of efforts to revamp and reopen the building have fallen short, and yet on every ride across the causeway, the building is still there, a visual reminder of what could be.
In short, as the Miami Herald referred to it in a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorials, on this side of the line the building represents Broken Promises.
But a special meeting at the City of Miami commission on Friday, Sept. 5, hopes to definitively make good on the promise of the venue and turn the page on the seemingly everlasting saga of Miami Marine Stadium.
The commission will be voting on whether to allow city residents to approve a contract with a private company to “operate” and “manage” the venue. The vote would take place on Nov. 4.
“This is the best news that we’ve had in the 18 years I’ve been working on this,” said Don Worth, co-founder of the advocacy group Restore Miami Marine Stadium.
Others share in the excitement, even as they still have questions.
“The devil is in the details,” said Chris Rupp, the executive director of Dade Heritage Trust. “There has to be money coming from somewhere not just to operate that stadium but also to restore it. It’s not like it’s ready to step into and plan events.”
City commissioner Damian Pardo, whose district includes the stadium, said answers are forthcoming. He imagines that during the special meeting on Friday, city commissioners will discuss a plan being formulated behind scenes on funding the renovations of the dilapidated structure.
He estimates that the city might borrow up to “$60-$65 million-range for the reconstruction of the stadium” by issuing a bond.
“It’s important to remember that we really brought all of this together as quickly as possible. There are discussions that are not complete, that have not been fully fleshed out and they won’t be able to be complete until we discuss them,” Pardo told WLRN.
When Pardo was voted into office in November 2023, he said that making progress on efforts to revitalize Miami Marine Stadium was high on his list of priorities.
The city opened up a bidding process to choose a company to operate and manage the stadium in January. The company Global Spectrum LP won.
In the special meeting on Friday, commissioners are expected to propose asking voters if they want to approve the contract with the company.
Global Spectrum LP is a venue management company that operates across the US and Canada. Since 2008 the company has also managed the Miami Beach Convention Center, a time span that includes the years in which the City of Miami Beach spent $640 million renovating the building. The company is also known as Spectra.
Commissioner Pardo said that he still has not seen all the bid documents that lay out the terms of the proposed contract between the city and the company. But he said it will be clear that the company will be providing material benefits to the community.
“I believe the operator will be making direct investments in the infrastructure, and that will also support the city’s mandate to go ahead and issue a revenue bond for Miami Marine Stadium,” said Pardo. “That’s the idea, that’s what we’re fighting for.”
The city has not yet released the proposed contract that voters will be asked to weigh in on, so specific details are not yet available.
Legendary stadium was once close to demolition
Even the story of how the building came to be abandoned is a labyrinth of city politics.
After Hurricane Andrew weed-whacked its way through South Florida in 1992, the City of Miami declared the building unsafe and asked the federal government for assistance in knocking it down. But the building’s insurance company required an inspection. Once inspectors looked into the matter they found that the building was structurally sound. Since the building was not damaged, the city was forced to give the federal government back the money for demolition.
“To this day there is a perception that it was damaged by Hurricane Andrew, but it wasn’t,” said Worth.
The city was directly operating the building at the time, and it nonetheless opted to shut the building down entirely, saying it was losing money anyway.
The city manager in 1993, Cesar Odio, argued that even if the building was intact, it would be best to tear it down. He was a member of the Miami Rowing Club, which sat on the far end of the property.
“I love the place,” said Odio. “But the reality is that, with the number of times Marine Stadium is used, we need a facility that is of more economic benefit to the city. I think there are things we can do to derive funds while maintaining a facility for public use.”
The push to tear down the building created an uproar for the public, including fans of shows, water sports enthusiasts and historic preservationists.
“The city is trying to tear down a landmark,” architect Hilario Candela said in 1993. “The city is a waterfront oriented city, and that’s what makes it different.”
Officials in Miami backed down on talk of demolition. Operations stopped entirely. The building has since sat abandoned, taken over by graffiti artists, becoming something of a legend in terms of abandoned structures. For years, skateboarders regularly climbed onto sharply angled roof to use it like a ramp. The view from the top offers an unparalleled view of the city skyline on the other side of Biscayne Bay.
“It’s like the Swiss Alps up there,” remarked Worth.
Worth moved to Miami in 1993, a year after Hurricane Andrew. He never saw the building in operation, but he became obsessed with seeing it brought back to life, a passion he said was started because of his wife.
For years, all the activism has yet to bear fruit. But this time is different, said Worth. He is excited about what the future holds. The bidding process was a battle of two heavyweight companies, he said, a good omen of good times to come. The two major venue companies that put in bids to manage the stadium were ASM Global and the winner, Global Spectrum.
“That’s the most important thing, that we had top firms putting in proposals on this. It should make people thrilled and ecstatic,” said Worth. “Global Spectrum already has people on the ground here, they know this market from their work in Miami Beach.”
‘You have to believe’
The stadium has had a close call with renovation before, but those hopes were dashed when the political will to take on the project fell apart.
Former Mayor Tomás Regalado was elected in 2009, saying that one of the main goals of his administration was to reopen the stadium, the same year the stadium was listed as on the most “endangered” buildings in the US by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The city commission approved a Virginia Key Master Plan in 2010, which included the plans for the stadium. Then, in 2013 commissioners approved a plan specifically for the stadium site. Activism from singers Gloria Estefan and Jimmy Buffet, among others, seemed to give the push for renovation momentum.
Nothing came of it.
In 2017 the City of Miami came up with a $40 million plan to restore the stadium, and commissioners even voted to issue $45 million in bonds to fund the project. The deal back then would have been much cheaper than today, both in costs and thanks to near-record low interest rates that would have lowered the cost of borrowing the money needed. That effort was torpedoed after the city canceled two bids seeking companies to operate the stadium in the following years.
The bonds were never issued, and timed out.
To stave off an irreversible decline in the structure, the city spent $2.4 million to replace damaged pilings and make other repairs. That work was completed in January 2024.
Nearly everyone agrees that Miami Marine Stadium is an architectural landmark, and over the years there has been a broad consensus that the building should be brought back to life. But throughout all the attempts to move forward with restoration, activists and city officials could not figure out how to make the financial part of the picture work.
“The city ran it and it was not financially successful,” said Worth. “Our main focus has for the most part been on feasibility. If it’s not sustainable financially then you’re really nowhere.”
That’s what has Worth excited about the coming special meeting on Friday and the potential of voters greenlighting the contract with Global Spectrum LP to operate and manage a revamped Marine Stadium. Once the management and moneymaking part is set in place, the city can actually issue the bond and borrow the needed money for restoration. Back in 2017 the city did it in the wrong order, he said.
Ever since he really picked up the cause in 2008, Worth was waiting on the stars to align for the right political moment to get it done. He said the election of Commissioner Pardo in 2023 and the longtime support of Mayor Francis Suarez have pushed the project closer than ever to becoming reality.
Mayor Suarez has been vocal about wanting to renovate the stadium since he was a city commissioner, and he ran on a platform of getting it done, much like former Mayor Regalado. In his final State of the City address, Suarez mentioned that he wanted to make progress on restoring Miami Marine Stadium in his final days in office as part of his legacy. Suarez did not respond to a request for comment.
“We needed a political champion and now we have two,” said Worth.
Pardo warned residents not to be too cynical of the process that left the stadium abandoned for 33 years and counting. He said that inside the city there is broad support for the effort this time around, and that the support will endure.
“I think you have to believe,” said Pardo, speaking to anyone who might harbor doubts about the project. “The intent is there. The people are in place. I think the time has arrived for this to happen. And to those who don’t believe, I encourage them to be generous and join us. Because you certainly don’t want to be part of the reason that something doesn’t come to fruition.”
For his part, Don Worth hopes to still be around to see a grand reopening celebration one day, if everything goes as planned.
“I’m 75 and God knows I want to be vertical and above ground when it happens,” he said.
The special meeting of the City of Miami commission is set to start at 10:00am on Sept. 5. Members of the public can attend the meeting at City Hall in Coconut Grove or watch the meeting live here.
