FIUGoldenPanthers.com

The Fair continues to stand in the way of progress and education in Miami Dade County. Go F I U!

What? They have the right to that land as they have a long-term lease. The burden is on FIU to find a suitable alternative. As the article states, if FIU's proposal forces the Fair to incur double or triple its current operating costs, that's obviously not a good solution.

Hopefully the Tropical Park option works for the Fair.

Leases are broken all the time and FIU has provided several options. Tamiami will not work because of the neighborhood. The site off 75 is perfect for traffic and accessibility. The fair is not going into this Looking out for the interest of the community which it says it is. It is trying to do what's best for itself though it hurts higher education in turn. If it did want to be a good citizen it would realize what the highest and best use of the land it leases are. In turn it should HELP find an alternative that is suitable and FIU should pay, 100%, for the move and construction of similar facilities. Instead it says NO to everything with no intent to compromise or work with the state, county or FIU. It has shown bad faith throughout this process.

FIU should close the use of all parking facilities for the fair moving forward.
Close all FIU access to parking and bring in the tow companies to tow any illegally parked vehicles.

The Fair will never move of its own accord. The real question is why the County would sign a 99 year lease that pays them $130k/year next to a huge and growing University with the smallest amount of allocated land for any other state university. I guess the political environment was a lot different 25 years ago and they were very short-sited.

It's not hard to find who signed that lease on the counties behalf; maybe someone should ask them why.

If you say so.

I do. Thanks.

The Fair seems to be softening its position a bit as the County has offered 4 sites to them for consideration. The Fair says they will now consider two of the sites West of the Dolphin Mall and the Turnpike if FIU pays for the due diligence of these sites.

The report says that the Fair still does not consider Homestead AFB or the parking lot area of Dolphin Stadium as viable options.

So though the Fair has not said anything positive about these suggestions, they at least have not rejected them out-of-hand.

http://www.bizjournals.com/southflorida ... -fair.html

I thought someone in this thread was saying the Fair would reject all proposals because they don't care about the community and think the Fair should simply give up land it has the right to in order to make FIU happy even if it means they'll be stuck in a potentially worse locale. But hey, what do I know?

Not much, especially about leases and negotiations. Go F I U!

The Fair is between 'a rock and a hard place' as FIU has the mandate of the County voters, the superior economic and social service position and the support FIU has from the County legislators. The Fair basically has a friendly lease they signed 20 years ago with a County body that had a very different agenda than it has today.

Everyone knew this day would come, however instead of the Fair working with the State and County, they are making things as difficult as possible. Wasn't a big fan of that Carn'y environment they brought to town every year and I'm even less so now.

p.s. Miami-Dade County's population is bigger than 16 U.S. States and its land mass is bigger than 2; it needs great institutions to be built here, not the hinderence of some traveling road show.

Anyone read today's Herald article on the Mayor trying to resolve this? Basically the Fair Ground is trying to extort $220 Million from FIU and the State for a two-bit fair that somehow managed to sign a 99 year lease next to a State University with the smallest footprint of any in the state.

Wonder who was involved in drafting that lease; I know Alex Penelas was the Mayor of MD County at the time. But seriously, a month long greasy-food, cheap-ride, attraction, is holding up a 55,000 student 24/7/365 learning institution that pumps untold billions into the local economy? Enough is enough.

I also wonder where all that money went that was supposed to bring high-speed rail out to FIU. We voted for that one too, yet that money seems to have found a black-hole as well. There are 2 and a half million people out here and we are being manipulated by a few special interests. 2016 aint that far away.