The Miami City Commission has since moved to defer the planned February 24th vote until late May after Commissioner Joe Carollo urged City Manager Art Noriega to reconsider the mounting financial impacts caused by increasingly costly restoration, which centers around reestablishing its original use as a concert venue.  

“I have been asking for the administration to give me a study to show how much we’re going to be losing, or if they think we’re going to make money, how much are we going to make, in a five-year projection. Nobody will give me that,” the commissioner said at the hearing. “It’s not that we don’t want to look back and enjoy history, but you can’t bring everything back again.”

Miami had previously approved $45 million in now-expired funding for a restoration effort after a 2016 Indiegogo campaign backed by Heineken and the National Trust for Historic Preservation brought attention to the long-neglected waterfront stadium originally designed in the early 1960s by the late Cuban immigré Hilario Candela, who died in January leaving out an important voice in the restoration debate. If demolished, the Brutalist icon would join Little Havana’s Orange Bowl, which was taken down back in 2008, as Miami-area sports venues that have gone under the wrecking ball since the recent development-rich transformation of the city began.