MIAMI — Few things make Carlos A. Gimenez more aggravated than Marlins Park. A decade ago, Gimenez, then a county commissioner, was one of the few local politicians to oppose spending hundreds of millions of public dollars to help the Miami Marlins pay for a new stadium they said they could not afford to build on their own.
Gimenez, who is now the mayor of Miami-Dade County, was outvoted. In the midst of a recession, the city and the county agreed to pay for about three-fourths of the $650 million retractable-dome stadium, even though the team would keep nearly all the revenue from the building.