Miami city officials “recently learned that the Marlins have been storing pallets of supplies in one of the four city-owned garages next to” Marlins Park, and city officials now want the team “to pay more than $30,000 in additional monthly rent for using the Center Field garage south of the stadium as storage,” according to Rabin & Hiaasen of the MIAMI HERALD. The city said that the team is “using about 18,000 square feet of space on the garage’s first floor.” It is unclear “how long the team has been storing the materials in the garage.” City of Miami Public Facilities Dir Henry Torre in an e-mail said that the Marlins “still owe the city $24,000 in back rent for the use of parking spaces during the baseball season last year.” The Marlins “rent about 5,700 parking spaces at $10 a space during the baseball season, but the team does not have any right to use the garages for storage.” Torre said that the team “deducted the $24,000 from the rent payment last year because flooding in a parking lot made some spaces unusable.” He said that in “lieu of rent for the storage, the city would be willing to take back some of the parking spaces to be used for the storefront restaurant-and-retail space the city installed in the garages, which opened last year.” But so far, “no businesses have opened in the garages” (MIAMI HERALD, 3/9).
