(CelebrityAccess MediaWire) — One year after dropping $28 million on the shuttered Miami Arena, and vowing to turn a profit at the notoriously nicknamed “Pink Elephant,” Glenn Straub is ready to consider alternatives for the struggling facility.
Straub has listed options ranging from selling the property to razing the aging pink building.
Straub’s announcement once again raised concerns over the future of the downtown Miami arena that covers 5 acres of land. While the arena itself consistently loses money, it sits on what could be valuable developable land.
“I said we will try it for a year and that is what we did,” Straub told the Miami Herald. “We said we needed 105 dates to break even. We did 88.”
Straub, a seasoned investor with interests ranging from manufacturing to country clubs, said he will make a decision about the arena within the next six months, and will stop accepting most bookings in the meantime. He estimated his loss on the arena last year at roughly $5 million.
He insisted he would still make an effort to find a use for the building, possibly selling to an investor will to make a go of the arena in its current state.
“I don’t want to be known as the guy who tears things down,” he told the paper.
He floated another idea of partnering with a university to turn the arena into a film school, which would make the property tax-exempt again.
Developers have been looking at the arena’s land as prime real estate in the area’s unprecedented redevelopment boom.
Built in 1988 for $52.5 million, the arena was initially home to the Miami Heat and later the Florida Panthers. Both teams moved, and the arena was placed on the auction block in 2004. –by CelebrityAccess Staff Writers
