The City’s Own Spreadsheet Says the Quiet Part Out Loud: Our Marinas Already Earn More Than This Lease Guarantees

In March 2021, as Miami debated the last attempt to lease away the Virginia Key marinas, the City of Miami produced a financial pro forma for its marina system. We reviewed it from a public records request. It is dated March 17, 2021, and it models — in the City’s own numbers — what these marinas earn for Miami today and what they could earn with market-rate pricing.

Five years later, with a nearly identical lease back on the November 3 2026 ballot, that spreadsheet reads like a warning label.

What the City’s own projection shows.

The pro forma modeled two scenarios for each marina: the rates then in effect, and a “proposed new rate” closer to market. For Marine Stadium Marina — the City-run dry-storage facility next to the historic stadium — the City projected that raising rates from $21 to $29 per foot and adding 50 racks would produce a stabilized net income to the City of about $2.28 million per year, roughly $80 million over 30 years.

Pause on that. The bad lease on your Nov 3 2026 ballot guarantees the City a minimum of $2.2 million per year — for both marinas, all 27.6 acres. The City’s own analysis says the smaller marina, by itself, under City operation, nets more than that.

For Rickenbacker Marina, the City modeled operations — including the cost of a full staff. At the old rates, the City projected netting about $2.8 million per year. At market rates: roughly $5 million in year one, growing to about $190 million over 30 years.

Combined, the City’s market-rate scenario projected approximately $7.4 million per year by year two and about $270 million over 30 years flowing to the City — money that funds parks, police, and seawalls without raising your taxes.

This isn’t hypothetical anymore. The City already raised the rates.

The 2021 projection assumed a rate increase the skeptics called optimistic. Then the City went and did it. As of November 1, 2025, the City’s published rate card sets Marine Stadium Marina rack storage at $28.35 per foot per month — essentially the $29 the pro forma modeled. Post-pandemic demand for Miami boat storage surged, waiting lists run long, and the City is already funding improvements at Marine Stadium Marina — new electrical systems, new asphalt, new floating docks in design — out of the revenue these marinas generate. The “proposed rate” scenario is no longer a projection. It is, approximately, the current price sheet.

Now look at what the lease pays instead. The deal on the ballot hands both marinas to a private developer for 45 years, extendable at the tenant’s option to 75. In exchange, the City gets a guaranteed floor of $2.2 million a year (with escalations of 3–5%) plus 6% of the operator’s gross revenues. If escalations run at the 3% floor, the guaranteed base totals roughly $105 million over 30 years — almost exactly what the City projected it would earn keeping rates frozen at 2021 levels forever, and about $165 million less than the City’s own market-rate projection over the same period.

Even the developer’s own 2017 proposal — the one this deal is legally locked to — projected total payments to the City reaching about $5.1 million in year 15. The City’s own pro forma beat that number by year two, operating the marinas itself.

Why is the deal locked to 2017 economics?

Because a court ordered the City to execute the lease on the terms of the old proposal — the City’s own attorney confirmed on the record that the deal could not be renegotiated. The rent floor was set from a 2017 appraisal of a 2015–2017 deal, and there it stays, for up to 75 years, no matter what the waterfront is actually worth.

Here’s the simple version. Under City operation, Miami keeps 100 cents of every dollar these marinas earn — and they’re earning more every year. Under this bad lease, Miami keeps a fixed floor plus 6 cents on the dollar of someone else’s business, at 2017 prices, until as late as 2101.

The marinas aren’t broken. They’re profitable, growing, and already reinvesting in themselves. A NO vote on November 3 keeps that revenue working for Miami — and forces any future deal to reflect what our waterfront is worth today, not a decade ago.

Vote NO on the Virginia Key marina lease.

—————————————————— Sources: City of Miami marina pro forma dated March 17, 2021, obtained by public records request; City of Miami P&L statements obtained by public records request; City of Miami published Marina Rates (effective November 1, 2025), miami.gov; executed Lease Agreement, Art. IV (Resolution 26-0254); Virginia Key LLC response to RFP No. 16-17-011 (2017); certified transcript, City Commission meeting of June 11, 2026.