David Beckham's MLS ownership group has said that it will “pay some sort of annual rent -- ‘fair,’ ‘market’ or ‘reasonable’ -- to build a stadium on prime public land,” but the $500,000 figure “floated in early talks with the city of Miami is so low that the city manager has called for the two sides to ‘take a breather,’” according to Patricia Mazzei of the MIAMI HERALD. While Miami “has not countered with a figure” of its own, City Manager Daniel Alfonso said that it is “far higher than” $500,000 -- possibly even as high as $12-14M. Alfonso: “We’re just too far apart.” Mazzei reports Alfonso had “initially asked city consultants to take a look at how a potential deal with Miami Beckham United might work financially if the investors filled a deep-water water basin known as the Florida East Coast Railway slip to build a 20,000-seat stadium.” But Alfonso said that he had “called off that request, at least for now” because he “did not want Miami to spend money studying the possibility until the city gets a better sense of how much Beckham’s group is willing to offer” (MIAMI HERALD, 6/3).
