It doesn’t have the seaside view they wanted, or be in the 
downtown core served by public transportation, but Miami-Dade commissioners want to reach out to retired British fútbol star David Beckham and his investors, again, about establishing a Major League Soccer team in Miami, using the Florida International University Panthers’ football field in West Dade as their temporary stadium site.
The measure passed Tuesday instructs the mayor to work with FIU and come up with an offer to use the campus football field while Beckham finds a permanent home. It was pushed by Commissioner Juan Zapata, who has long thought that The West End, as he calls West Kendall, was better suited for a soccer stadium than the downtown anyway.
Zapata told Ladra that the first step toward a permanent site would be to establish the team that the public can get behind and route for.
“Having a team makes it easier to find a permanent site,” Zapata said. “Beckham is focused on a permanent site cause that’s what MLS wants, but I feel we need to build local support and the best way to do that is to find a temporary location first, similar to what Houston did.”
FIU as a location came up last year, when two 
other waterfront sites were shot down. The first was a Port of Miami location nixed by the county commission and the second was a nearby location, on a to-be-filled-in boat slip by Museum Park, eighty-sixed by Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado. Since then, the Beckham brouhaha that infected everybody with soccer fever has sort of fizzled to whispers now and then ala “whatever happened to.”
Read related story: Go west, Beckham — Strike 2 for waterfront soccer stadium
Sure, there are references to ongoing talks.
“Things are progressing in Miami, and we are very much on track in our plans,” Miami Beckham United was quoted in a statement to ESPN.
“David Beckham is very positive about the future of the club, and he continues to enjoy incredible support from the people in Miami. Right now, our focus is on identifying the location for a purpose-built stadium that will be the team’s permanent home. Careful consideration will be given to FIU when we address the opportunities for a temporary facility,” the group’s email said.
Beckham himself was more animated in an interview with E! Online.
“We’re pretty close to announcing 
certain things and then the stadium will come after that,” Beckham said. “You can’t build a stadium overnight, so finding the right site, finding the right place in Miami is important for us. But it will all start coming together pretty quickly and everything will start happening pretty soon.”
But other MLS expansion bidders are also progressing. There are two competing bids in Minneapolis and Sacramento has added some clout to its group, including the family of San Francisco 49ers owner Jed York. There are only two new teams being added, so there’s a little race going on in the professional soccer world.
ESPN reported that Miami Beckham United has most recently — and quietly — explored privately owned sites. But real estate prices in the waterfront urban core Beckham wants are pretty high. The old Miami Herald building and the 14 acres it sat on sold for $236 million to the Genting casino people in 2011.
That may be why the stadium dreams seem to have been stalled and Zapata hopes a temporary site can get the team going and create enough fan buzz to get the concept moving again.
Hey! Maybe this should be something the county could tackle with a P3?
Miami-Dade to woo Beckham back with temp soccer site added by Ladra on
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