LoanDepot Park

Location: Miami, Florida, USA
Capacity: 37,442
Record Crowd: 37,446 – World Baseball Classic. USA vs Dom. Rep. (March 11, 2017)
Home Team: Florida Marlins

LoanDepot Park (stylized as loanDepot park) is a baseball park located in Miami, Florida. It is the current home of the Miami Marlins, the city’s Major League Baseball franchise. It is located on 17 acres (6.9 ha) of the former Miami Orange Bowl site in Little Havana, about 2 miles (3 km) west of Downtown. Construction was completed in March 2012, and the venue opened as Marlins Park for the 2012 season.

The stadium is designed in a neomodern form of baseball architecture. LoanDepot 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.

The stadium’s public-funding plan 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 premises on which the tax-funded stadium deal was based, the ballpark controversy intensified. Despite questionable financing decisions by members of local government at the time, the financing of the project did not use General Fund taxes from local taxpayers and pulled from tourist funds specifically allocated for public-benefiting projects like sports facilities.

The stadium features a nightclub and a swimming pool just beyond the left-field fence which brings a touch of South Beach into the park. The taste of Miami food court includes such local cuisine as Cuban sandwiches, pork sandwiches, and stone crabs. There’s even an aquarium inside the walls of the home-plate backstop containing live, tropical fish.

The facility hosted a second-round pool of the 2013 World Baseball Classic, a first-round pool of the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and hosted the 2017 Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The park also hosts soccer matches, fundraising galas, and other events during the winter. It also hosted the Miami Beach Bowl from 2014 through 2016.