The Florida Marlins New Stadium and Its Promising Economic Gains

Let’s play ball!!! The Florida Marlins have finally came to agreements with the Miami Dade city council to build a state of the art baseball stadium in the middle of Little Havana on the old Orange Bowl grounds. The retractable roof ball park will seat 37,000 fans with plans to be done by 2012. The owner Jeffery Loria, hopes to host the World Baseball Classic Finals in 2013 gaining a higher fan base and promote the futuristic stadium. Not only are the Marlins management giving the Miami community and Marlins fans a new home for ball games; they are promising huge economic gains for the community. The Marlins are speculating that through the construction of the new ball park it should create $609 million dollars in direct construction expenditures and they are promising that $457 million will be spent locally to purchase goods and services and provide labor necessary for construction. They are predicting that the construction of the stadium will create a total economic output of $815 million for Miami. The Marlins are also promising approximately $341 million of income for Miami area workers during construction period and generating $24 million of fiscal revenues (taxes and fees) for state and local governments. Along with the construction benefit’s they are hoping to provide 2,708 jobs for the operations of the new ballpark and this would be an estimated $140 million of income for these workers. This sounds like a no brainier for the Miami Dade city council to sign this agreement but, the reason for their concerns is the $347 million that they have to dish out to make sure that this amazing new stadium gets built. The city has pushed off this stadium for almost ten years and many people think that this stadium could lead the city into a debt that is not needed during our economic recession. Though if the Marlins follow through on their promises this could allow for a ton of jobs for the city. For more info check out the executive summary for the Marlins new stadium at http://www.marlinsnewballpark.com/pdf/executive_summary.pdf . Are you behind the new ballpark?