The Florida Marlins are preparing for a July 18 groundbreaking for their new 37,000-seat retractable-roof ballpark after Miami-Dade County last week priced most of the bonds for the $515 million facility.
The county on June 29-30 priced $340 million of bonds, including $90 million of refunding debt. It had difficulty selling some of the bonds within interest rate caps established by elected officials and fell short of pricing the desired amount by $6.2 million.
County commissioners met shortly after pricing last week to approve increasing the maximum interest rate on the tax-exempt bond sale to 8.2%. Commissioners previously had set the maximum interest rate cap at 7.5%. They also authorized the sale to be closed after the Marlins agreed to pay for the $6.2 million shortfall. That reduced Miami-Dade’s funding commitment to the project to $341.3 million. Most of the debt is secured by various convention center and tourism taxes, although the county did include a pledge to contribute non-ad valorem funds if the taxes fell short.
In addition to last week’s issue, the county plans to place $100 million of variable-rate bonds for the ballpark financing on Monday, and close the entire transaction on Tuesday. Another $50 million of general obligation bonds will be sold by the county later.
The city of Miami is also contributing to the stadium and is expected to sell bonds to build parking facilities. The new ballpark is scheduled to open in 2012.
