Marlins Stadium

Marlins Stadium

Marlins Park is a baseball park in Miami, Florida. It is the current home of the Miami Marlins Major League Baseball team. It is located on 17 acres of the former Miami Orange Bowl site in Little Havana, about 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Downtown. Construction was completed in March 2012, in time for the 2012 Major League Baseball season.

The stadium is designed in a neomodern form of baseball architecture. The contemporary ballpark is the first fully, non-retro ballpark constructed in MLB since Oriole Park at Camden Yards began baseball's postmodern trend in 1992. Marlins Park was also LEED certified as the greenest MLB park in 2012. The building is the sixth MLB stadium to have a retractable roof. With a seating capacity of 37,442, it is the third-smallest stadium in Major League Baseball by official capacity, and the smallest by actual capacity.

Despite general agreement among sports people that Miami needs this type of venue for professional baseball, Marlins Park has been a source of controversy in South Florida ever since it was proposed. The stadium's public-funding plan—which would eventually strap a $2.4 billion debt to Miami-Dade County alone—led to a protracted lawsuit, largely contributed to the ouster of several local politicians, and triggered an SEC investigation. As revelations of the team's finances and their handling of payroll (both before and after construction) seemed to contradict some of the pretenses on which the tax-funded-stadium deal were based, the ballpark controversy intensified.

The facility will host a second-round pool of the 2013 World Baseball Classic. Marlins Park executives are bidding to host the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Star Game but face competition from Nationals Park.