It’s a small ground even by MLS standards.
DRV PNK Stadium holds only 18,000 people, so it’s easy to understand why InterMiami CF wants to add bleachers in three corners, expanding the capacity by 3,000 fans — and they want to do it before Lionel Messi plays his first game with the club on July 21.
“Time is of the essence, you may have seen that we took delivery of some aluminum that goes at the base of the stands, we don’t have the seats yet,” said Stephanie Toothaker, one of the soccer club’s lawyers.
She said the bleachers are coming from the F1 facility at Hard Rock Stadium.
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Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis said permits would be expedited, announcing an agreement on Friday.
“Absolutely, once we get the payment for the first permit, we’ll be happy to move forward and work with them and partner in this undertaking,” Trantalis said.
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The city manager sent the team a threatening letter on Wednesday saying it had to stop building the extra seating, but then realized no construction had started.
“We received accusations that we were doing construction which we were not, there’s no construction happening on site, the city sent staff out to verify that, they verified there was no construction happening on site,” Toothaker said.
Of course, an extra 3,000 seats won’t come anywhere near meeting the demand for seating once Messi is playing on DRV PNK pitch, and then of course, there’s the parking issue.
“There’s parking everywhere in the area, I know you remember Orange Bowl days, we would all go down and you figure out where to park, or you take Uber or Lyft and you make it work, we’re very comfortable with the parking,” Toothaker said.
She’s even more comfortable with this development: the city will once again allow the 20-acre lot south of the stadium, known as the yellow parking area, to be used for parking. The team has agreed to build a public park on that site, but the city hasn’t designed it yet.
“We agreed to extend the parking, we agreed to move forward in getting a new permit for additional stadium seating and I think we all realize that the construction of a new park, which they committed to making, can’t really begin until sometime at the end of next year so they’ve got parking for a good long time and we want to see the success of these games going forward,” Trantalis said.
The mayor’s office says the permitting process should be finalized by Friday.
