Play Ball Downtown!

To:  Local Representatives

We believe in D.C.Copeland's Unified Field of Dreams Theory regarding the location of the proposed Florida Marlins baseball stadium where MLB = Major League Baseball and Mē = Mass Transit squared. This is the formula for a successful downtown Miami baseball stadium that is connected by mass transit (monorail/commuter rail/elevated people mover). This unique and unifying solution to the question of where the proposed Florida Marlins stadium should be placed includes existing and proposed mass transit, something not considered at the present moment. Incorporating mass transit into the formula will allow people living as far away as Palm Beach and as close as Miami Beach and Kendall to leave their cars and their frustrations with traffic and parking behind. This alone should insure the stadium's success-- even if the current team or any future team leasing the property has chronic losing seasons. In essence, the stadium will always be a winner even if the team isn't.

The formula rests on the assumption that the best place to build a downtown Miami baseball stadium is near existing mass transit, not at the proposed Orange Bowl site where none exists. Logic then directs the location to the nexus of the mass transit universe in south Florida: the old Miami Arena site. There lies three existing mass transit lines (MetroRail, MetroMover, and the FEC tracks). Copeland calls the mass transit hub there the Grand Central Station of the American Pastime. With the addition of a monorail line that connects Miami Beach (and the Arsht PAC, the AAA, the proposed art and science museums in Bicentennial Park and the Island Gardens hotels and mega-yacht marina on Watson Island), all of a sudden south Florida is UNIFIED.

To test the theory, it is paramount that county and city commissioners re-think the current proposal where public money is siphoned off in the hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars to pay for the stadium. Instead, we urge them to bring the Florida Marlins and Glenn Straub, the owner of most of the land at our chosen site, together to work out a deal. As it now stands, Straub wants to swap his land for the Orange Bowl site in exchange for building the stadium himself. To us, there shouldn't be any question about this proposal. It removes the financial burden from the taxpayer and puts the stadium where it belongs: at the nexus of the South Florida mass transit universe. Building the stadium there will also encourage more people to live downtown where thousands of empty condos are waiting for them. Having the option to either walk or to take mass transit to the stadium adds one more perk to living in downtown Miami but the site also takes into account one of the most important aspects of running a major league team: it removes the hassle of attending a ball game which increases ticket sales.

As our elected officials, please save us hundreds of millions of our public dollars by insisting the baseball stadium is built downtown on the old Miami Arena site where it can flourish from existing and proposed mass transit.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The Play Ball Downtown! Petition to Local Representatives was created by and written by D. C. Copeland (gumsandals@yahoo.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.