Miami-Dade County and Miami Heat Cuts Naming Rights Ties with Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX for Miami Arena
Miami-Dade County and the NBA’s Miami Heat have ended their partnership with the insolvent cryptocurrency exchange FTX and are now looking for a new naming rights partner for their downtown Miami arena.
The statement followed the FTX group’s CEO resignation and bankruptcy filing in the US earlier on Friday, which marked the shocking demise of one of the biggest and most influential figures in the cryptocurrency business.
Miami-Dade County and Miami Heat stated in a joint statement on Friday night that they will cooperate to find a new naming rights partner for the stadium, which was only rebranded as FTX Arena last year, and that they find the reports concerning FTX to be “very upsetting.”
Like other cryptocurrency businesses, FTX has spent a lot of money sponsoring athletes. For the renaming of the Miami arena in June 2021, FTX reportedly signed a $135 million, 19-year contract. This deal would have also included $2 million annually to the Miami Heat.
A five-year agreement was also reached in 2021 for Major League Baseball to designate FTX as its official cryptocurrency exchange. FTX is also the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team’s authorized
With the University of California, Berkeley negotiating a $17.5 million, 10-year naming rights arrangement for the school’s football stadium in 2021, even college sports have connections to FTX.
New Research Shows Miami is on the Way to Being the Next Silicon Valley
According to recent research from Moody’s Analytics, a division of New York-based Moody’s Corporation, the expansion of Miami-Dade County’s finance and technology sectors significantly boosted the region’s office market throughout the pandemic leaving the potential for Miami to replace Silicon Valley.
Miami has the potential to develop into a prosperous tech center, according to Lu Chen, a senior economist at Moody’s and co-author of “The Growing Power of Tech on Miami’s Commercial Real Estate Market.”
Fintech companies have found The Magic City to be the most alluring. According to the survey, businesses from New York are increasingly choosing to relocate to Miami due to high taxes, building/office costs, as well as housing.
For instance, the report stated that the fintech business FundKite moved its headquarters from New York to Miami “because it has become a solid hub for the financial industry and has a lot of good expertise and manpower accessible.”
This continued pattern has allowed the office landlords in Miami-Dade County to raise rent demands faster than the national average, including in San Francisco, California.
According to the survey, incomes for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) workers in South Florida have not increased as much as asking rents in Miami-Dade.
The average salary for STEM workers nationwide increased by 6.8% in 2021 compared to the previous year. San Francisco saw a 1.9% increase in STEM earnings. Their increase in South Florida was only 0.9%.
As of August 13, the typical STEM job nationwide paid $53,428 per year. STEM jobs in Florida typically pay $40,081 a year. In California, STEM salaries pay an average of $48,899 annually.
In contrast to the San Francisco Bay area and other well-established technology centers, South Florida has a very small proportion of the total number of tech jobs.
According to Chen, only 3% of jobs in South Florida are in the high-tech sector, compared to 23.5% in the San Francisco area.
Other challenges for Miami’s expanding technology sector, according to Moody’s, include the impact of climate change, South Florida’s transportation infrastructure, the underrepresentation of minorities in higher-level positions, and concerns about educational standards.
The San Francisco Bay area has significantly more prestigious universities that develop technology talent, according to the study on education. The report states that “Miami must attract more students interested in tech.”
However, the survey noted that there is cause for hope because there are regional initiatives like Computer Equity Miami that seek to increase accessibility to tech education for all of its citizens. Miami’s advantages also include a high concentration of banks and businesspeople.
South Florida ranks sixth in the nation for the proportion of all U.S. entrepreneurs. Moody’s attributed this ranking to the region’s 150 banks and 500,000 accredited investors, which offer a variety of choices for raising financing.
Miami is attracting a lot of interest from bitcoin businesses as a result of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and other local leaders placing significant bets on the technology.
Suarez’s efforts to establish Miami as a crypto hub, according to David Caputo, a commercial real estate data quality analyst for Moody’s, have aided in luring crypto businesses to that city, including Blockchain.com, which has reportedly facilitated more than $1 trillion in crypto transactions since its establishment in 2011.
According to Moody’s research, the future of cryptocurrencies may very well determine Miami’s status as a global tech hub. Although the value of cryptocurrencies has fallen recently, the report’s co-author Caputo claimed there isn’t much of a negative for Miami.
John Ruiz Plans to Build a University of Miami Stadium at Tropical Park in Miami-Dade
The University of Miami Hurricanes have been without a stadium since 2008 and have been traveling to the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens in Coral Gables for all of their home games. It’s been such a struggle for fans and students alike that a University of Miami alumni has taken it upon himself to remedy the situation.
John H. Ruiz, billionaire attorney and founder of MSP Recovery recently announced the plans to build a new stadium located at the Coral Gables High School. According to local officials, Ruiz did not consult with Miami-Dade County Public Schools or the City of Coral Gables on the plan.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools still owns the property where the proposed stadium would be built. Once his plans were denied, Ruiz then announced a new spot of the Miami Hurricane’s stadium, Tropical Park in Westchester. According to Ruiz, “It’s gonna be at 4 Tropical Park — there are about 270 acres there. The design is over the top, it’s gorgeous, I’ve seen it already a couple of times.”
The design for the stadium includes 65,000 seats with space for graduate-level classrooms and extreme water fixtures throughout the property. The architect behind the plans includes HKS Architects.
Tropical Park is publicly owned land by Miami-Dade County. Ruiz doesn’t appear concerned about speaking with Miami-Dade County, “We’re gonna present the plans to the county, but the county is less important in my opinion because it has to go out to a vote to the constituents as a referendum. Obviously, we’re going to talk to the commissioners and the mayor, but ultimately it goes out to a vote to the general public.”
This isn’t the first sports venture that Ruiz has been a part of. In 2011, he leased a 90-acre baseball development at the City of Homestead. The city later filed a lawsuit to evict him from the development 2 years later after he didn’t pay the utilities, insurance, and taxes on the property.
A private-sector attorney, Jose Sanchez-Gronlier stated that he didn’t want one of the last green areas in Miami-Dade County to be demolished for a stadium. It is unclear how residents and local representatives will respond to the new development. Ruiz will meet with the county to present the Tropical Park stadium idea to the county next week.
New Miami-Dade County Legislation will Require Landlords to Provide a 60 Day Notice of Rent Hikes
Residential landlords in Miami-Dade County are now required to provide renters at least 60 days’ notice of rent increases of 5% or more, as renting in South Florida grow increasingly expensive.
The legislation was proposed by Commissioner Eileen Higgins and unanimously approved during the commission meeting on March 15th.
Throughout the country, renters are facing a massive rent spike by at least 50% and according to Miami-Dade County, they hope this legislation will help curb those numbers and make Miami more attractive to tenants.
This new legislation would apply to renters nearing the end of their contracts as well as those on month-to-month leases who are facing the 5% rent increase. Also in the new legislation is the notice on eviction time going from 30 to 60 days, including month-to-month leases that came from a 12-month lease.
According to a commissioner, landlords could bypass the new legislation by offering weekly leases. This new legislation can only be enforced in court.
Higgins stated during the meeting, “Thank you all for your understanding about how fair notice is the right thing to do, but not all landlords are doing the right thing. So, this requires them, if their mothers didn’t teach them to do the right thing.”
There are also 2 additional bills for rent control expected to be voted on by this summer, Tenant Bill of Rights and Rent Control. The tenant bill of rights would allow tenants to withhold rent for certain maintenance issues that the landlords haven’t repaired. Landlords would also be required to provide renters with information about their rental rights for state and county laws.
If approved the Rent Control legislation would put a cap on rent increases for 12 months. There would be many hurdles with this legislation that involved multiple votes by commissioners, the mayor, and Miami-Dade citizens.
Miami-Dade County Looking to Add a New City for the First Time in 16 Years
Credit:Miami-Dade County
It has been 16 years since Miami-Dade added a new city but that could change for Biscayne Gardens. Following a public decision, county commissioners are deciding today to utilize 5 square miles that border 4 northeast cities.
The next step in the approval process is for local voters to vote in the special election on November 2, 2021. If voters decide on the new city, Miami-Dade will have a new 35th ‘parish.’ The last was Cutler Bay which was founded in January 2005.
The 5 square miles is located near North of Northwest 167th Street, East of Northeast 18th Avenue, South of Northwest 128th Street, and West of Northwest 17th Avenue. The current neighborhood is called Biscayne Gardens and the area would keep that name. About 3% of the land is undeveloped with a quarter of the area is dedicated to traffic, communication, and utility.
There is still much room for growth. Included in the plans to form the city are 3 apartment complexes with 861 units, mega-church, and additional apartment complexes.
Biscayne Gardens would also include 3 parks which would include a community center with costs of $1 million with 20,000 square feet.
The Biscayne Gardens Municipal Advisory Committee was formed in September 2003 to look at whether the area could turn into a city. The committee later broke apart in In April 2012.
The area of Biscayne Gardens now has 35,000 residents with over 50% being registered to vote. If the city is formed, the special election would cost $94,000. This price the county would pay up front then the city would reimburse once established.
Although a strong opposition on the vote, we will know more after today’s meeting.
One Of These Downtown Miami Sites Could Be The New Amazon HQ
Now that Miami has officially thrown its hat in the ring to be the new home of Amazon’s second headquarters, the competition is also heating up between potential development sites. Amazon’s Request for Proposals was very specific regarding the criteria they are looking for with regards to square footage, zoning and proximity to transportation.
Using a software called Zonar that has recently been adopted by the City of Miami to streamline the development process, it takes only a few hours to pinpoint potential development sites and maximize the space with Amazon’s criteria in mind.
Here is the full feasibility report with details on all 6 potential sites in the Downtown Miami area. Which do you think is the best fit?
County Considering Network of ‘Water Buses’ Around Biscayne Bay
Photo via Flickr/Phillip Pessar.
In their wacky-tobackie dysfunctional ways, South Florida’s politicians are getting serious about looking for answers to our worsening traffic issues in Miami. The latest ideas being floated (floated!) are aquatic, per yesterday’s county commission meeting, when commissioners got a preview of their probe into possible water transportation solutions. As Miami Today reports, it’s an idea that people have yacked about for years, but finally the county is getting serious, with various types of water taxis, and even ‘water buses’ being considered. They are pouring over old water transport studies for ideas, and looking for possible locations for docks and connectivity to other transit, as well as ideal sized vessels, and whether the solution would be a city or county-run service.
