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Becks kicks up a storm
David Beckham is jeopardising maritime sector growth in Miami by seeking to build a soccer stadium at the port of Miami. Or so an alliance of shipping interests and a billionaire car dealer believe.
They recently took out a full page advertisement in the Miami Herald and its sister Spanish language paper, El Nuevo Herald, protesting against the Beckham project
The alliance is led by John Fox, former head of governmental affairs at Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and includes two chapters of the International Longshoremen’s Association, two stevedoring companies and car dealer Norman Braman who was previously owner of the Philadelphia Eagles.
The advertisement specifically raised the prospect of lost jobs in traditional port working – crane operators, longshoremen and others – if the stadium plan goes ahead. The argument was put that the expansion of the Panama Canal will generate these sort of jobs and that to lose them in favour of low paid stadium jobs would be a negative step.
Port and city interests aspire to capitalise on the port’s short distance from the Panama Canal and to build Miami’s status as a distribution hub for goods entering the US. They are backing this objective with two billion dollars of planned infrastructure upgrades including a new one billion dollar tunnel to connect the port to major highways. Four new super post-Panamax cranes have also been installed in the port that are able to handle new generation high capacity container vessels.
The Beckham camp has responded, however, that the port site is only one of four sites under consideration for the 25,000 seat stadium. Neisen Kasdin, attorney for Akerman Senterfitt and advisor for the Beckham group also pointed out: “The plan doesn’t interfere with port operations. It will likely generate more revenue for the port in the shorter term than other concepts that have been discussed.”
This might be a point of view worth listening too in more ways than one. A new publication that can give insight in this respect is OECD’s publication, The Competitiveness of Global Port-Cities: Synthesis Report, published in late 2013. It provides a synthesis of the main findings from the OECD Port-Cities Programme, created in 2010 in order to assess the impact of ports on their cities and provide policy recommendations to increase the positive impacts of ports on their cities.
It contains many useful lessons for those that may be considered to be rather traditional in what the port environs should be used for.