The retired football (soccer) star, David Beckham, proposed a plan to build a Major League Soccer Stadium in Miami. The proposal by David Beckham and his business partners, led by Miami executive Jorge Mas, includes 25,000 seat stadium, a hotel with 750 rooms, a restaurant, 23 acres of youth football pitches, retail and office space, and a public park of 58 acres.
This plan also includes building one of the largest shopping and entertainment centers of Miami. The soccer stadium steals most of the limelight, but Jorge Mas wants to create this retail center – which would be the city’s largest and most popular shopping destination.
An outline of the project which was released showed the ‘Miami Freedom Park’ complex that Beckham wants to build on the Melreese Golf Course, which would have 600,000 square feet of space for restaurants, entertainment venues, and shops.
However, this plan has received some opposition by Miami residents since it proposes to replace the city’s only public golf course with a soccer stadium, especially by the First Tee Golf program, an international youth development organization which is introducing Golf to kids and young adults.
Beckham and Mas sought approval from the Miami City Commission to have buyers sign off on the plan to build the soccer stadium, entertainment complex, and offices. Miami commissioners are set to vote on Thursday on whether to hold a November referendum on the soccer plan, with voters authorizing final negotiations.
The Melreese site is not the only site that Beckham has pursued. More than a year ago, he had proposed a stadium in downtown Miami, which drew heavy criticism due to the lack of parking and potential increased traffic chaos. It also sparked fears that some low-income residents would be displaced.
Under the deal framework included in the referendum, the Beckham group would have to pay $3.6 million per annum and rent for the Melreese property, which is a meagre amount as compared to the $425 million which they are predicted to earn in sales and lease revenue, with the soccer stadium accounting for almost 11%.
The Miami Freedom shopping complex would have more retail space than Brickell City Centre (520,000 square feet) and CocoWalk (467,000) and Bayside Marketplace and Mary Brickell Village (both smaller than 250,000 square feet). It has been described as a retail/entertainment center in a breakdown which was provided to Miami, with a lot of space, for more than two dozen restaurants and over 70 stores and entertainment venues.
The Beckham complex, though, would still look modest in front of the Aventura Mall with 2.7 million square feet and two of the largest suburban make, south and west of Miami: Dolphin and Dadeland, with about 1.4 million square feet each.