Mayor to meet with FIU and Youth Fair over standoff

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez is scheduled to meet Thursday with representatives from Florida International University and the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair over their standoff on the school’s expansion plans into the fairgrounds.

The Fair people don’t want to move — and they don’t have to. They have a locked-in lease through 2085. That’s 70 years of Twilt-A-Whirl at Tamiami Park.

The vote that passed with 65% approval last year was to give FIU the same variance on land use as we give the Youth Fair if the university ever got lucky enough to move onto the 63 acres of fair grounds property, which is really zoned as a park. It is not a “mandate” that the non-profit Youth Fair get their ferris wheel and corndogs and scram — no matter what the FIU honchos and their highly paid lobbyists would have you believe.

The FIU people want The Fair to move to an area of unincorporated Miami-Dade just outside Homestead. They are expected to give a presentation at 3 p.m. Thursday to the mayor and the Youth Fair people.

But Youth Fair President and CEO Robert Hohenstein thinks its for the same Homestead Air Reserve Base property that his executive board has unanimously rejected twice.

“We have unequivocally told anybody who will listen that we are not interested in that site,” Hohenstein told Ladra Wednesday afternoon. “But in order to be a good citizen, good neighbor and as open minded as we can be, without hurting our business, we’ll go to the meeting and listen to what they have to say.”

He has far more patience than Ladra does. We called the FIU president’s office and are still waiting to hear back.

Gimenez is expected to broker some kind of deal at a meeting at 3 p.m. Thursday. Maybe it will be one of those best ever, unprecedented deals. Maybe he can put a stadium on top, like a cherry.

Ladra can’t help but wonder what Carlos “Mr. Giveaway” Gimenez is going to have to throw in to make this happen. You know he wants to. He has already said he supports the FIU expansion. He needs to make the FIU honchos happy so they can fund his re-election next year. What kind of “economic incentive” is he dreaming up as we write/read this to convince the Youth Fair people to move? How many millions is he going to have to give them? Will he defer fees, rent payments?

The mayor’s spokesman wasn’t immediately available. He’s been making himself scarce since that PBA ruling came against the mayor’s veto. And he probably wouldn’t tell me if I did get him. But there’s no other reason for Gimenez to have this meeting, to be involved in this negotiation at all, except to sweeten the deal, grease the wheels, so to speak.

FIU is supposed to pay for the move, but might they be willing to dangle mo’ money in front of the Youth Fair people to offset any losses the $13 million-a-year operation may suffer in the relocation process?

That would still be taxpayer monies, since the school is getting state subsidies for the move, and Hohenstein wants none of it.

“We’re not interested in any public money of any kind,” Hohenstein said. “That’s one of the problems we have as a community and as a country today, too many people with their hands out wanting our tax dollars.

“That’s not what we’re about. It’s not in our DNA.

“We have said for five years, because it has literally been five years since we first started talking about this in 2010, is that we want three things,” he said.

“We want a site equal to or better than in all respects to our current location. We want reimbursement for investments made in the park, as the lease agreement calls for, and we want three years notice, as the lease agreement calls for.”

So, wait, the county can terminate the lease? Of course, if all fails, the county can simply say it is acting in the interests of the voter mandate and terminate the lease, letting a judge decided what it was worth.

Hohenstein doesn’t want to think that.

“I’m going under the assumption that the county would not simply terminate the lease,” he said.

Carlos Gimenez, Dade County Youth Fair, FIU expansion

Mayor to meet with FIU and Youth Fair over standoff added by Ladra on September 16, 2015
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