http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/890362.html

Beach officials eye stadium cash

The stadium debate takes a detour at the Miami Beach Convention Center as the city pushes for county money there before a ballpark is built.

BY DOUGLAS HANKS
dhanks@MiamiHerald.com

Miami-Dade County should spend hotel taxes refurbishing its largest convention center before building a $609 million baseball stadium, Miami Beach Mayor Matti Herrera Bower said Thursday.

"We can't lose sight of what is the engine that brings the money in," Bower said. "Our main industry is tourism." A stalled expansion of the Miami Beach Convention Center will get more attention in the run-up to next week's county vote on the stadium financing plan.

HOTEL TAXES

With half the construction tab financed by hotel taxes, critics see the ballpark draining dollars needed to make Miami-Dade more competitive in the convention industry. But supporters of bringing the Florida Marlins to Little Havana dismiss the expo matter as a distraction, since Miami-Dade has already allocated the money.

"Some would have you believe that a stadium will be built at the expense of the Convention Center. Don't believe it," Victoria Mallette, spokeswoman for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Alvarez, wrote in an e-mail.

Alvarez will head to the front lines of the expo debate Tuesday morning when he is scheduled to deliver his State of the County address at a theater that's part of the convention-center complex.

The schedule calls for Bower to introduce him. Presiding over the ceremony will be William Talbert III, Miami-Dade's tourism director and one of the strongest advocates for expanding the convention center.

Miami Beach commissioners have argued the convention center's fate for several years, with some questioning whether the city's high hotel rates would ever let it be a top contender for large meetings.

Miami-Dade voters in 2004 approved borrowing $55 million to add a banquet hall to the city-owned facility, but the city says the construction will cost at least $75 million. Neither government would agree to pay the difference, and the project stalled.

Last week, Miami Beach commissioners unanimously approved a resolution urging Miami-Dade to make the center a priority for hotel taxes.

Mallette wrote that Miami-Dade has already approved about $250 million in county money for the convention center, citing the banquet-hall bond, other one-time payments and an annual $4.5 million distribution of hotel taxes to the city. "As you can see, sufficient support to the Convention Center is available to fund planned improvements," she wrote.

MAINTENANCE

But Jorge Gonzalez, Miami Beach's city manager, said all but the banquet-hall dollars go to ongoing maintenance at the money-losing facility, which is home to the Miami International Boat Show, Art Basel and other major events.

The stadium plan calls for borrowing $297 million by pledging future hotel taxes to bond holders. The Miami Herald found a continued slide in tourism would leave Miami-Dade unable to cover the stadium debt, but county officials said they're confident hotel revenues will resume growth soon.

Bower predicted a new baseball park would leave no hotel taxes for the convention center.

"I'm not for approval of the stadium," she said, "because that will take all the money."