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the boat show’s use, not for us, mind you — but there is no money, it seems, for the renovation of a facility that the city allowed to deteriorate … for this very reason maybe? So that they would be justified in renting it out at bargain prices?
No wonder people have no confidence in our local government.
“This is the camel’s nose under the tent,” said Village of Key Biscayne Mayor Mayra Pena Lindsay, referring to that saying that if a camel’s nose gets under the tent, you know his body is coming in soon. She’s afraid this will open the door to all kinds of commercialized uses for the Miami Marine Stadium.
Actually, me thinks the camel’s nose poked under the tent in May, when the city commission approved a 10-year contract 
with a Medley company to produce concerts and events there. The boat show is like the camel’s whole face.
After all, the master plan that was approved in 2010 — with 18 months of public input from the Key Biscayne community — never called for temporary pilings in the sensitive basin or for an 830-slip docking facility and water taxis to help ferry somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 to the venue over the course of three days. The master plan calls for smaller events and concerts, seeing as how the stadium seats about 6,000.
“At the end of the day, this is a public park and a sensitive basin — and they are basically building a showroom on it,” Pena Lindsay said. “It is about commercializing a public park and making it a convention center. It’s an opportunity to monetize a piece of property they’ve been trying to monetize for a year.
“This is absolutely not necessary,” said the mayor, who drives by the site almost every day and sees the build out happening.. “It’s a traveling trade show. Every other city across the country uses convention centers and existing facilities.”
The village has authorized three pending lawsuits against the county and city. One requests that the lease be put on a referendum for Miami voters to approve. The other two lawsuits state that any lease or permits would violate the master plan and the multiple deed restrictions that limit the property’s use to recreational.
Miami-Dade Commissioner Xavier Suarez deferred
this decision last month because he wanted to hear from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — which has given the boat show a green light — the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, which apparently doesn’t care either, and the people on Key Biscayne, which he heard at a town hall meeting last week.
Now he wants to hear from the county’s own Department of Environmental Regulation and Management (DERM). But he said a lot had happened since the deferral. For one, the city set up an advisory or steering committee to help formulate the future uses of Virginia Key and the Marine Stadium (hint: get the actual stadium fixed up).
He also has more information about boat show facilities. There are boats North of 41st Street on Miami Beach, still, and the sailboats are at Bayside Marina. He doesn’t feel that the Virginia Key use is going to be so dramatic. “You have an automatic dispersion of people at all these venues,” Suarez said.
But he also has an idea for next year and the years after that — to move the boat show to the southwest corner of the Port of Miami first eyed by David Beckham for a soccer stadium. He said the mayor was to meet with city officials later this week to discuss that possibility further.
And then we’ll see another group of people against it and another controversy brew.
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