A few short years after City of Miami commissioners approved a proposal to put a ferris wheel on public land at Bayside Marketplace, the operators of the ferris wheel have fallen into delinquency on over $1 million in taxes, WLRN has learned.
The money owed would go directly towards funding the city and county governments.
The operators of the ferris wheel, an Arizona-based company called Skyviews Miami Observation Wheel, has barely made tax payments on the operation since 2020, records show. Out of all the delinquent taxes owed by any company in Miami-Dade County, the company ranks second in delinquent “tangible property” taxes during the last year.
Skyviews acknowledged the tax issues, but told WLRN in a statement that it boils down to a dispute over the value of the ferris wheel itself. The county Property Appraiser Office has valued the wheel at $17 million — what it cost. Skyviews says the value is much lower, which should result in lower taxes owed.
“We have worked closely with their office and have provided many documents to support the value stated by us. We are close to coming to agreement on the value and have made payments based on the value we have provided to them. We expect closure soon,” Kade Lopez, a representative of Skyviews Miami, wrote to WLRN in an email.
For its part, the county tax collector’s office has filed a warrant to collect the outstanding tax bill.
“They have been working with the Office of the Property Appraiser but because they have not paid we followed the requirements of state law and obtained authorization for a Tax Collector Warrant,” said Gerardo Gomez, the deputy tax collector for Miami-Dade. “We obtain the authorization but recognize their efforts at a resolution.”
The ferris wheel operates on city property just a few short steps from canceled SkyRise Tower, a proposed 1,049 foot observation tower that was approved by city voters in 2014.
WLRN recently reported on the dismal conditions of the plot of land for the tower project, which also sits on city-owned property. Hundreds of thousands of dollars that were promised to the Liberty City Revitalization Trust, a city agency that assists with affordable housing and social programs in the poor and Black neighborhood have gone unpaid, since they were tied to the completion of the tower.
Debt over rent and ticket surcharges
The tax troubles at the ferris wheel come months after a City of Miami audit found that the ferris wheel operators owed the city $384,827 in rent and ticket surcharges, going back to when the wheel opened in 2020. More than $250,000 of the missing money would have gone to the Bayfront Park Management Trust, the group that manages the largest urban park space in the city.
The city administration told WLRN that since that audit was released in February, all money owed to the city itself has been paid. The city could not confirm whether the Bayfront Park Management Trust had received the missing money.
The Bayfront Park Management Trust did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether the money has been paid. The issue of unpaid funds appears on no agendas of recent Trust meetings.
The chairman of the Bayfront Park Management Trust is city commissioner Joe Carollo, who worked as a paid consultant for the company that aimed to put the ferris wheel at Bayfront Park. After he announced a run for office in 2017, Carollo stopped his consulting work for the company.
Carollo did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Once he was elected, Carollo was the only commissioner who opposed the ferris wheel project, calling it a bad deal for the city. Projections for ticket sales and city revenues from the ferris wheel project were not based on any real analysis, he argued.
“I think this Commission needs to start more acting like a business board of directors when we're doing business,” Carollo said in the 2019 meeting where the deal was discussed.
Skyviews sued Carollo after the vote, alleging the commissioner used "trade secrets" and insider knowledge from his consulting work in pushing for the city to receive more revenue. An appeals court ruled that Carollo's behavior was protected by immunity because it was in his official capacity. The suit was dismissed last year, records show.
This story was produced by WLRN, South Florida’s only public radio station at 91.3 FM, as part of a content sharing partnership with The Biscayne Times. Read more at WLRN.org.