Miami officials think the Virginia Key marina referendum is a ‘bad deal’. So why is it on the ballot?
Editor’s Note: This story was first published on October 8 by WLRN Public Media. The Spotlight is republishing the story under a partnership agreement with WLRN.
This November, City of Miami voters will be casting ballots on a question about city marinas that no elected officials wanted on the ballot.
The reason why is longwinded, but the history of Miami Referendum 3 stems from a bid that was won by the company Virginia Key LLC to lease and operate 27 acres on Virginia Key in 2016.
The city subsequently cancelled that bid and never placed the lease item on the ballot to be approved by voters — a requirement for leases of waterfront property in Miami.
The company sued the city and the litigation dragged on. In 2023, after a bench trial, Eleventh Circuit Court Judge Alan Fine issued a final judgment in the case, finding that the city acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in failing to place the item before voters.
The city appealed, and in 2025 an appeals court reaffirmed the finding: The city had to put the question before voters.
At a City of Miami commission meeting this past June — a full ten years after the original contract was drawn up — no elected officials were eager to put the question on the ballot. Property values in Miami have more than doubled since 2016, meaning the locked-in contract would leave considerable money on the table for the city.
But City Attorney George Wysong told them they were required to place it on the ballot because of the appeals court decision. Failing to do so could lead to commissioners being held in contempt of court.
“The court says essentially in the order that this is a ministerial action which means you have no discretion,” said Wysong.
The tract of land in question is notable for one very big reason: It is one of the extremely rare waterfront properties that offers an unobstructed view of the growing Miami skyline.
The sun sets just over the city, a fact that has made the Gramps Getaway bar there a major hit with residents since it opened doors in 2023.
Commissioner Miguel Gabela repeatedly and unambiguously said the proposed contract was bad for taxpayers and the city.
“I think this is a bad deal for the city, something that’s ten years old. It does not reflect property prices today, what we can get as a lease today. It doesn’t reflect any of that, so this is a bad deal,” said Gabela.
Fellow commissioner Damian Pardo said he “shared” Gabela’s concerns.
Commissioner Ralph Rosado asked: “Is there no wiggle room to negotiate better deal terms with the party that was awarded the contract?”
Commissioner Christine King voiced frustration about being rushed to place it on the ballot in November, saying that she believed it could be placed on the ballot at a different time and still comply with the court order.
Mayor Eileen Higgins worried that residents would not know or understand that the terms of the contract were negotiated nearly a decade ago, when property values were about half what they are today.
She said: “Obviously, we’d like to have a better marina deal.”
After all the frustrated discussion, commissioners reluctantly but unanimously voted to place the item on the ballot. Referendum 3 is set to go before voters in November.
The terms of the contract
If Referendum 3 passes, the city will enter into a 45-year lease for 27 acres of waterfront land on Virginia Key, just off the mainland. The contract includes two options to renew the lease for 15 years at a time, turning it into a potentially 75-year lease deal.
The company that would win the lease is Virginia Key LLC, which is a 50-50 partnership between the Connecticut-based RCI Group and Texas-based Suntex Marinas.
On the property today is the restaurant The Rusty Pelican, the bar and restaurant Gramps Getaway, the privately-run Rickenbacker Marina and the publicly-owned and city-operated Marine Stadium Marina.
Under the terms of the proposed lease, Virginia Key LLC will be able to evict the tenants, knock down the existing facilities and build a brand-new waterfront center featuring bars, restaurants and shops. The existing private and public marinas would be consolidated into a single privately-run marina.
In turn the city would get a minimum of $2.2 million rent for the site, as well as an additional 6% of all revenues. These terms were negotiated a full decade ago. The plan for the site was drawn by Coconut Grove-based architectural firm Arquitectonica.
“It’s not just for the boaters. It’s for people coming to enjoy the restaurants. For those on a date after the restaurant, you can take a stroll. You wanna train for a triathlon, we’re gonna have lockers to keep bikes and keep things in the building,” Robert W. Christoph Jr., President of RCI Group said in a recent podcast episode of A Day In Miami.
“There’s a lot of upgrades that need to happen,” he added. “And so, we’re not just building the marina for today, for the boater today. We’re building it for the boater in 25 years.”
Proponents of the deal have launched a political campaign – “Vote Yes to Save Virginia Key” – to win voter approval in November. Attempts to get in touch with the Vote Yes to Save Virginia Key campaign were not successful.
The companies behind Virginia Key LLC both have long histories with marinas in South Florida. Suntex runs the Miami Beach Marina on the southern end of Alton Road.
Just weeks ago, it was ordered to stop operating sections of the marina because city inspectors found it had become unsafe. Sections of the concrete docks have literally fallen into the water.
RCI Group — the other company — ran the Miami Beach Marina in 2000 when a contractor ruptured a sewage pipe under a boat slip, spilling 25 million gallons of raw sewage into Biscayne Bay, one of the worst sewage spills in Florida history.
The company and its contractors reached a $2.5 million settlement with Miami-Dade County in 2001, records show.
The push for a no-vote
A large coalition of individuals and groups have come out against the proposed deal, including boater groups, current tenants, Gramps Getaway bar patrons and the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, and are urging a “no” vote on the referendum.
Bruno Barreiro, the Republican candidate for House District 113, a district that includes Virginia Key (and the North Grove), has also come out against the deal.
Aabad Melwani, president of Rickenbacker Marina, the private marina on the site, said he likes his private marina — but fears the loss of the public marina will be bad for the public, especially for the boating community.
“It displaces a number of small businesses. It displaces middle-class boaters. It displaces all the regular folks that keep boats in the water here. And in its place, what the garish renderings look like, [it’s this] luxurious kind of retail complex and then mega-yachts in the water,” Melwani told WLRN.
The area was originally dredged in 1963 to create the Marine Stadium basin, where boat races took place for decades.
Melwani’s family has run the Rickenbacker Marina since 1983, and he said that since then he and his family have been planting mangroves, which protect the shoreline from rising seas, around the marinas.
He said that the proposed development will cut all the mangroves. Renderings released by the supporters of the referendum show no mangroves.
Melwani also fears that if larger boats are allowed into the proposed marina that it will mean deep dredging of environmentally sensitive areas once again.
“This was all dredge fill basically that we’re on. But now it’s kind of a thriving habitat. We have an incredibly healthy seagrass bed. We have an incredibly healthy wetland habitat,” said Melwani.
“It’s amazing to go down there and see rainbow parrotfish chewing barnacles off the pilings, nurse sharks, bonnetheads, all kinds of different fish. People at the end of the day need to be reminded that Biscayne Bay is essentially a giant estuary, and it’s not ripe for development.”
In the midst of the long string of litigation, in 2021, City of Miami voters were asked to weigh in on a ballot referendum that would have waived competitive bidding and given Melwani’s company a 45-year lease for the land.
Virginia Key LLC sued to block that ballot referendum while it sued the city to have its deal placed on the ballot. In the end voters rejected the proposal by 52%.
Adam Gersten, owner of Gramps Getaway, said the Vote No campaign has received so much support because “this is our public waterfront.” He said the main problems with the proposal is that “it’s just a locked-in deal. It is what it is. There’s no sort of wiggle room to change it up.”
But that doesn’t mean he’s against any kind of proposal to change the status quo on Virginia Key. He said he hopes the referendum is defeated and that on the flip side, a better deal can be negotiated.
“There’s an opportunity for the city to get both a fiscally and ecologically beneficial deal on the other side, and one that’s collaborative,” Gersten said. “We’re not anti-development. We’re just saying it has to be thoughtful, and it has to be forward-thinking, because this is a 75-year deal.”
