Virginia Key Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Good evening. Thank you all very much for attending this Virginia Key Advisory Board meeting on Tuesday, February 24th. We're getting started about 540. We don't have a quorum, but we're going to go through our agenda for discussion, and we'll be finished a little bit early tonight. Rafa, would you like to start with... Lobbyist note or Pledge of Allegiance?

So we'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you. Thank you very much. Do you want to do a roll call?

Yes.

Andrew Frey. Peter Ehrlich.

Here.

Luis Casamayor. Steven Leiner. Lynn Lewis. Gary Milano. Vincent Richter. Monty Trainor. Nicholas Lopez Jenkins.

Here.

Jackie Collier. Kerry Johnson.

Present.

Andres Rivero. Here. Chuck Ellis.

Here. Thank you very much. Are there any requests for absence waivers?

No.

All right. We're going to have it go through the items quickly for discussion because we don't have a quorum. We'd very much like to welcome two new board members, both of whom who showed up at the last meeting. I apologize for that meeting not taking place. Thank you very much for showing up at our last meeting and showing up tonight. We have Chuck Ellis, who's the director of the Parks Department, who's sitting with us tonight, and Andres Rivero, who is an appointee of Mayor Francis Suarez and brings a wealth of information also to our board. Chuck, would you like to say anything?

No, not really. Just happy to be here. Happy to keep learning more and more about the whole park system, including Virginia Key. So I'm here to work with you in any way possible.

Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Andres, any comments? Thank you very much. It's very nice of you to put the time in and I know you're a busy attorney. On the meeting dates, we're here on February 24th and it looks like the next meeting is, is that right? April 28th?

Yes, it was decided after speaking and reviewing with the assistant city attorney, that the bylaws of Virginia K advisory board is for us to meet every other month. So we started incorporating that in October and moving forward, we'll be doing so every other month.

Okay. Thank you very much. And I know our board, we have a motion and legislation pending that affects our quorum. Has that been scheduled for, to be heard by city commission?

So it was scheduled previously on an agenda, and I will be working with the agenda office to add it to an upcoming meeting. I don't have the specific date yet, but I'll coordinate with the agenda office and I'll let you know as soon as it's been added to the item.

Thank you so much. One of us or more might want to attend the meeting and speak in favor of reducing the quorum. It makes it easier to have a meeting. We're pretty good at having five or six people. It's not always easy to get six or seven. and that legislation would help us. And an item that Raffaella sent us, the 19, the 2025 annual board report, that was in your email. It was submitted just this January to the city manager's office. Did everybody get a chance to read it who might want to read it, that annual report? It's very similar to previous years. We just sort of updated a few things using wonderful WordPerfect. We can always make changes to it at any time for future reports if anybody wants to make a suggestion. The next item I see for discussion is board member term expirations. I see... that under Peter Ehrlich appointed April of 2017, I didn't realize I'd been here that long. It just feels like five or six years, not seven or eight. And Steve Leibner is a wonderful board member, and Lynn Lewis, and also Gary Milano, and Vincent Richter. I guess we've all been around seven or eight years. On our agenda, the respective organizations that appointed us will have to formally contact the city and this board to request new appointments to fill these positions. And I have a question for the city attorney. Some of these board members have wonderful institutional memory for Virginia Key Park and Virginia Key Advisory Board, particularly Gary Milano, 30 to 35 years of experience, Miami-Dade County parks and on environmental issues. Is it possible if we step down from our roles as representing the appointing organization that an adjacent or another appointing organization appoints us to take the seat currently held by an incumbent board member. I don't know if I made that clear.

No. So you would be reappointed to the same board? Is that what you, or are we talking about a different board?

Yes. For example, I'm appointee of the Urban Environment League. If the Urban Environment League wants to appoint somebody new, could we appoint Gary Milano or Lynn Lewis?

Okay, understood. So the city code, I will read the section for you because I have it here.

Great.

But I believe that is not allowed, but we can always confirm. But based on the verbiage of the city code, I don't think it's allowed, but let me confirm that.

And it's not that we want to be permanent appointees, but those of us in this group, we have pretty good attendance records and certainly a lot of institutional memory.

Right. I understand. It says no board member shall serve more than eight consecutive years on any one board. The provision of this section shall apply prospectively to current board members. So it doesn't seem, it doesn't say anything else. This is section 2-885, which is the one that deals with terms of office. We can certainly see if there's a wrinkle there or if that's something that's possible. I don't see, based on the verbiage, that there's anything right that it would allow that, but we can confirm.

The verbiage is fairly clear.

Yeah.

Do you mind running it by another attorney who deals with boards? Maybe this issue has come up and we're not treading new ground.

Absolutely. I would definitely confirm. So yeah, I would definitely confirm with my office just to see if this has come up before.

And Gary Milano, would you like to make a comment?

Thank you. Yeah, I had a question. If the organization that you're representing, are you supposed to continue to represent that organization until they make another determination?

Yes. So you are to serve in your board position until your successor arrives. and so there will be some sort of communication through the organization or through the city i think it would be both i think that there would definitely be a communication but i think it would be both um we both we would have to as a city reach out to the organization communicate with them and then i guess you would hear from from both um you know who the new appointee is and then the board would have to formally you know, accept that person as a board member as well. So we would have to, you know, there would be a formal process for that. It's not going to be like something you're not going to know or you're not going to be informed.

Do you know if that has gone out yet?

I believe not. No. No, I believe that's something that we're going to be working on now.

Yeah, we wanted to wait to have this meeting. Okay. That way we could discuss and then we would be reaching out, but we haven't reached out yet.

Yeah. No, I think it would be good to get some new blood on the board.

Thank you very much. So in the meantime, we'll keep attending until we straighten this out and until somebody can take our places. Right. I'm the president of the Urban Environment League, so you can give notice to me, and we're trying to do our best to find somebody to qualify who wants to show up, make quorum, and contribute. But thank you all very much. I had no idea I'd been here eight years. And Gary Milano, it looks like you're the longest serving, April of 2016.

Yeah, I started with this. I think we came together in 2016 when this board was basically put together.

Does everybody know how this board came about, by any chance? It came about primarily through the advocacy of Greg Bush. Greg Bush was a professor at the University of Miami, and he was passionately interested in Virginia Key Park and the Black Beach. I think he wrote a book about the Black Beach, the Black Beach Trust. Greg Bush. And there were some issues regarding Virginia Key, Virginia Key Park 15 years ago. And he approached then Commissioner Francis Suarez. And Francis Suarez worked very, very hard with Greg Bush on the documents and the legislation to create the Virginia Key Advisory Board. And with Francis Horace's help as a sponsor, it passed its city commission and the Virginia Key Advisory Board was created. And the goal, as you probably all know, is to review any important issues, substantive, meaningful issues that will affect Virginia Key Park. The city staff and its consultants are supposed to brief us on upcoming issues and changes to Virginia Key Park. And then we opine on them.

Our recommendations are not official.

They're merely recommendation, hopefully from well-informed board members with a wealth of independent experience. So we came about because of Francis Suarez.

Well, I think more than that, it was part of the master plan that was developed by the community where it was written into the master plan that this board be formulated. And that's where Greg Bush took the lead with the mayor to formulate the legislation.

Thank you, Gary. You're absolutely right. Here's a copy. of the Virginia Key Master Plan 2010. It's available online, and everybody should have a copy. And there was the last few meetings of the Virginia Key Master Plan, I think 100 or 200 people were showing up. Isn't that right, Gary? Yeah.

Big turnout.

And many of the meetings were at the Virginia Key Rowing Club?

Yeah, there and Rusty Pelican.

Rusty Pelican, too?

Yeah. All right.

Moving on our agenda, and there's one more item that isn't on the agenda, but Andrew Frey is going to give us a very brief summary of the agreement with Marine Stadium and Global. Anybody know the name of the vendor who won the award, Global Spectrum? Is that right? Andrew's going to give us an update on where that stands.

So I think Global Spectrum is their legal entity name, but they go by Oak View Group. And so last week, the commission voted to approve the award of the RFP to the first ranked proposer. There were two proposers. There was an independent evaluation committee. They scored both proposers, and Oakview Group came out ahead. The evaluation committee made the recommendation to the manager. The manager made the recommendation to the commission in a written memo. There was a vote scheduled for it back in the fall. There was a special meeting. It was supposed to be about just that issue. There was another issue that was added to the agenda, I think, probably because of that second item. There was some difficulty achieving quorum. And so that vote never happened. And it kind of languished, came back finally for a vote last week. and the commission approved unanimously awarding the RFP to Oak View Group. What does that mean? So the RFP envisions a long relationship with a management company, but that relationship doesn't necessarily have to end up in one agreement. And probably particularly because we don't know what the costs are going to be. We need to leave some off ramps here in case the costs balloon. And I think there's a lot of public goodwill and support behind renovating the Marine Stadium. But at some point, everyone's got a squeal point. So we'll see. We'll build a financial model together. We'll see what the renovation costs look like. The agreement, the relationship will be split into three agreements. One is a short-term, no longer than five-year management agreement for the existing Flex Park. So Oak View is going to come in, they're going to start booking the Flex Park, they're going to start managing the Flex Park, getting a feel for the location, the traffic problems, the noise, the environmental issues. You know the stakeholders things like that And and and hopefully Really driving with their worldwide industry relationships more booking of events there of all different sizes So the relationship will have that one component which is a short-term management agreement of the existing facility and The second part of the relationship will be a business consulting agreement where we will pay them a fee, a nominal monthly fee, for helping us build the business model together. And based on that business model, that will guide us in the improvements that we need to design. Based on their knowledge of of world-class venues that they manage across the country. What does the front of house need to look like? What's the right ratio of regular to VIP seating? What's the right ratio of food and beverage points of sale? What's the right bathroom ratio? On the back of house side, how many loading docks do we need? How big does a manager's office need to be? Dressing rooms, green room, light and sound system. What do those things need to look like? And so then we'll build the business case. We'll do the drawings and the engineering based on that business case. That we'll cost it and price it at some point. And figure out if and how we can pay for it. Could involve capital sources from a number of different areas, county bed tax money, historic preservation tax credits, naming rights. We'll look at that in all sources of capital. If we think we can capitalize it and both parties still agree that it's a good deal, then we'll move forward with capitalizing and breaking ground in the renovations. When the renovations are done, then the third agreement would spring into place, which is the long-term Management agreement so that would that would become Operative after the completion of the renovations that being a long-term management agreement has to per the city charter Any long-term lease or management agreement of waterfront property has to go to the voters So the rough terms of that agreement will go to the voters this August Even though we're still many years from when that agreement would take effect, it really doesn't make sense to do part of the relationship. We really have to prepare for success. We want this project to succeed. We want the renovation to work. And if that's in fact the case, we want all of the agreements to naturally flow into each other. If we change horses, for example, if we design the renovations according to oak views, business judgment, did the renovations, and then did a management agreement at that point in time, long-term management agreement, well, maybe somebody else might win it, and they might not like how we designed the facility. So we really have to kind of work with the same relationship throughout, but divide it into these discrete agreements and provide ourselves like Like I said, we want to plan for success, but we also have to create these off ramps if the financial model gets out of hand. So that's a summary of sort of what the Commission voted on last week and sort of how that's divided up and how that'll hopefully flow going forward.

Thank you, Andrew. Any questions from board members? Gary?

Yes. Correct. it could be you know boat show concerts car shows uh magic mike could come back i don't know you know it depends and then so that's for five years so that's a done deal as far as this group will be managing or that property for five years correct that that was approved by the commission it was split into two the the vote was split into two items the first item awarded the RFP and gave the manager the authority to negotiate the short-term management agreement and the business consulting agreement. And then the second item that was voted on also unanimously was to send the ballot language, to approve the ballot language for the voters to vote on the long-term management. But that's why there were two separate items on the commission agenda.

And the consulting agreement involves the scope of their work will involve them evaluating the Marine Stadium to see if it will financially be able to survive is that yeah it's gonna it's gonna be to work with the city to develop a business model and a financial model for the renovation

that both parties have confidence in, and both parties agree.

But does that involve venues as far as what they're going to be doing in the water areas of the Marine Stadium?

I'm sorry, I don't understand.

Well, the Flex Park to me is the landward park. Right. The Marine Stadium is the waterward park. Right. So when, who is going to be evaluating different venues for the Marine Stadium to evaluate it to the level as far as whether the Marine Stadium is going to be restored or not. I mean, that's what it sounds like it's getting down to. If they come across with a business model that says, no, Marine Stadium will not be successful, then I think it's going to be torn down, it sounds like.

Well, it's one facility. So it's not this or that. It's the Marine Stadium and the parking lot. There will be some events that will be appropriate for the water-facing Marine Stadium. There will be some events like a Country Bay Music Festival that may be more appropriate. Or in that situation, maybe you have multiple stages. You have some bands performing in front of the Marine Stadium bleachers. And you have maybe a second stage, which is, you know, the second tier acts who are playing in the parking lot. I don't know. So it'll be it'll be up to us working with the with their expertise to develop a plan for how. What the renovation should look like to meet the market, how those renovations could be programmed either in the parking lot. or facing the water, or some combination of both to maximize revenue, which will help it make it financially viable to renovate the stadium.

So no restoration is going to go forward with Marine Stadium until this is realized, as far as this plan that they will put together?

That we will put together.

Okay, and that's going to occur before November of 2026?

No.

No. How long will that be pending?

It depends on how quickly we work together. I think that, well, but it's also not just, you know, it's a business, it's a narrative business plan. It's a live working financial model. And then that's, it's taking that financial model and the assumptions of that financial, again, what goes into that financial model, what are the assumptions that then have to be translated into architecture? So if they're saying, you know, five years from now, we're going to have, you know, 5,000 seats, and 4,500 of them will be regular seats, and 500 will be a VIP, and you say we're going to drive the revenue, and we're going to have 36 food and beverage points of sale, some under the you know, the historic structure, maybe some in a small, like, concession stand that we build next to it. Well, that drives revenue, but it also has a cost. So once we get to the, once we build a financial model, then we can draw drawings and engineer drawings that capture the assumptions of that model. Then we can price those drawings. And hopefully we've done a, hopefully we've done some work with the architectural and engineering drawings already that will help accelerate that. We have to cost it out. Obviously, we'll throw in, you know, CapEx assumptions into the early financial model, but as we go through the drawing process, those assumptions will get more and more refined and more and more accurate. And then, you know, once we have the drawings to a level where we think the budget's in close enough shape, our capital partners, you know, I'm sure the county is not going to want to let us access bed tax money unless we have some really tight numbers on construction. We can't access historic preservation tax credits, again, until we have a very good bead on construction numbers. So at that point in time, there will be a go, no-go decision.

What are the timelines? I'm trying to understand. I got the five-year management for the flex part. Do you have five years to develop this business model with the city? You know, it's five years?

No, it would be ASAP. There is no deadline for it.

But, you know, contracts always have specifics as far as timing, as far as when deliverables are due. I can't believe that it's an open-ended deliverable as far as when they're going to provide you with a business plan.

Yeah, right now it's open-ended.

Okay, okay.

Gary, I've got a couple comments that might help. In our Miami Today, it's on the newsstand now, there's a little summary of this. very similar to what Andrew was describing to us, but it says, floating Marine Stadium deal, global spectrum, we'll begin managing the Marine Stadium, Virginia Key Centre, not sure what Virginia Key Centre is, Virginia Key Centre and Flex Park under a five-year agreement, while the city of Miami prepares a voter referendum for a potential 40-year contract this August. Voters will be voting on August on the 40-year contract, even if all the details haven't been worked out as Gary has been bringing up. It says that the deal ensures the city will keep the majority of event revenues and up to $10 million for restoration, while global spectrum programs, concerts, performances, and community events. The August 18 special election will let residents weigh in on the long-term plan. And my question is, the last numbers we were seeing from the Capital Improvements Department, Andrew, last year, the cost of renovating Marine Stadium, I think we were hearing like $65 million. And that was without any truck loading, no outside bathrooms, no offices for the tenants. That $65 million figure for renovation costs for the stadium, is that still in what you and people in the city are discussing?

Not me. I don't know what the number is because I don't have a business plan, and I don't have a set of drawings that capture that business plan, and I don't have pricing based on those drawings. So I don't know who would throw around numbers like that.

The number we were getting from the Capital Improvements Department based on the drawings from Richard Heiselbottle, who is the architect hired by the city. to do the renovations for Marine Stadium. We were told that in order to achieve the designs of the work that he was being paid for, it would cost $65 million. It came out here, it's probably in three or four different meetings, those numbers have been discussed. I'm not sure what your question is. Are those numbers still accurate, the $65 million figure that we heard for the renovation costs?

Those numbers might be accurate for that set of drawings, but I have no idea whether those drawings capture what a successful renovation would look like.

Oh, so the city might not be using his plans? I have no idea. I think he's been paid a $2 million fee already for those plans. be a shame to throw the plans in the garbage can. Does anybody else have any questions? Gary, I think, has a follow-up question.

No, no, I'm done. Thank you. Thank you, Andrew. Anybody else?

Andrew, the point of bringing them in now, so events that are going on in Virginia Key now are basically people requesting permits, and these guys are going to go out and actively look to bring more events? Are they going to

Yeah, so right now, you know, we have a venues management department or section within my department that manages or monitors other city venues. The Tower Theater, our teammate theater, Night Center, Olympia, which we just sold, then this Flex Park. You know, they receive inbound inquiries to reserve the space for events, and there's a actually a fixed fee for the Flex Park that's in city code. We'd like to actually repeal that so we have more flexibility to negotiate deals and act as a fiduciary for the taxpayers' assets by driving revenue. But yeah, they're mostly responding to inbound inquiries, whereas Oak View Group, due to their reach and their industry relationships, will, I think, be able to more proactively market and drive programming there.

It'll get a better sense of what the economic viability of that is.

Yes, exactly. That's part of this early phase of the relationship. That's one of the benefits of getting them in there early so they can understand at least that half of the equation. Obviously, the Marine Stadium half is yet to be realized after the renovation, but at least part of the business plan they can get a better handle on.

Andres?

Yeah, no problem. I mean, I'll be negotiating on behalf of the city, and I'm a permanent member of this board, so I'm happy to give updates, but also if we can arrange it for some of the folks from Oak View to come to be in town, that can be arranged as well.

Great, thanks.

And one more question. You know, with all events in Key Biscayne Park, traffic is a huge concern, not only for the customers, but for residents of Miami and residents for Key Biscayne. I presume this Oak Group global spectrum, they're super aware of the traffic issues that come from huge popular events, right? Yeah. Are there any new solutions to those problems that have occurred over the last few years at this point?

I'm sure they'll bring some smart ideas, but ultimately it's the county who's responsible for the maintenance of traffic on the causeway. And sometimes they, you know, designed successful MOTs. I think Country Bay was generally successful, and then even though it was a rather large event, but other events, even smaller events, have been horrific traffic nightmares. So I'm not exactly, I'm not a traffic engineer, so I don't know why some of those MOTs have been more successful or less successful. The county certainly has their own in-house traffic engineers, and they work with the traffic engineers and MOT designers for each event that books the space. MOT means what? Maintenance of traffic. Thank you for our listeners. So, but yeah, I'm sure Oakview has, you know, has some ideas, either some innovations or some things that they've experienced in other markets. So... But a lot of it depends on, and that's why, really, it's done on a case-by-case basis, because each event is very different. And so, as much as we might want just to say, hey, we solved it, it's not really possible, it's not really how the system is set up, and I don't think it's really how the county would wanna handle it. They wanna look at each event individually.

We have a representative for Key Biscayne in the audience who's welcome to comment on this issue if he'd like, or he could wait for a future meeting. He'd prefer to wait for a future meeting. Any other comments?

Steven. I made it, I made it, I think. It probably showed up. Hi Andrew. The group might know as well as Andrew, originally in the plans there was a maritime and auxiliary building plan for the Marine Stadium. Is that still in the works? No.

The VIP. kind of staging area, dressing room, yada, yada, yada. It's changed.

There's been no morphing. We don't know what... That building is off the table, but other improvements that might be needed to meet, like I said, industry and market standards are on the table, as long as they improve the financial performance. The goal really is to renovate the Marine Stadium, but we don't want to... You know, we don't want to be bad stewards of the taxpayer money, so we want to give ourselves the best shot at making this a fiscally responsible decision. And we didn't feel that we could do that without a private sector partner by our side helping us feed the right assumptions into the model. And that's why, you know, that's why we went with the RFP process and selected Oak View. Working with them, building the model, giving ourselves the best shot at either making money or losing the least amount of money, but ultimately in service of renovating the Marine Stadium.

Thanks. Mr. Ellis, Chuck Ellis, any comments or questions for Andrew?

No, we talk regularly. I know it's a new process, so we'll definitely be putting, hopefully have some input into it as well, but we'll definitely keep a close eye on it.

Thank you very much. Any comments from anybody else? And moving on to our last item. Let's see. It looks like a number of us will be going off the board in the next few months as soon as our organizations can find people to replace us. I'm currently the chair, but the organization, the board will have to find a new chair and a new vice chair. And we can, let's leave that for the next meeting. And hopefully we'll definitely have a quorum at the next meeting. And I'd like anybody that wants to raise their hands to be the chair or vice chair, we'll be able to maybe discuss it in more detail.

Any other comments on this issue of new chair, new vice chair?

Any volunteers?

Peter, I just have a comment. You may want to wait until the new board is formed before they put together who the chair is going to be. Now, in the interim, if you do get removed, I think the vice chair could probably control the meetings and manage them. But I think you should wait until you get the new group of people and then select from that group. Okay. It's fine with me, Gary. I have a question.

Sure. When they're appointed to the board, is the same – well, I know they changed commissioners. And do those same commissioners in those areas or are those certain commissioners appoint those people that's going off the board? Or they would be appointed by those same commissioners that appointed you to the board?

Raphael, do you want to handle that question?

Can you please repeat? I'm sorry.

Okay, what I was saying was that when they come with the people that's going off the board, will the new board members be appointed by the new commissioners that's in those positions?

So whatever seat is appointed by a commissioner will be appointed by a commissioner. In this case, I believe all the appointees were by different associations, so it would be the respective associations who would be the ones appointing the new board members. So Rafa's telling me there's only one board member that's appointed by a commissioner, but she's not termed out, so she would still be sitting.

Okay. Any other questions or comments from anybody before somebody calls for adjournment? Steve Leidner, anything you'd like to bring up?

I just got here.

I know. Andres Feroveni, thank you so much for coming, and Chuck Ellis for your first formal meetings. There'll be a meeting again in April, and we'll have another agenda. We'll have some great items, and Andrew Frey was very nice to give us an update on that.

on the Oakview situation.

Anybody else have any comments? Do we have a call for adjournment?

Second?

All in favor? Aye. Thank you all very much.