@PatriciaMazzei

A Miami-Dade County commissioner has become the first elected official in the county or city to formally oppose David Beckham's bid to build a Major League Soccer stadium on the downtown Miami waterfront.

Xavier Suarez does not represent the district where the proposed 20,000-seat stadium would go. But he is a former Miami mayor whose son now sits on the city commission. Beckham's representatives have been in now-stalled talks with the city over the site, which is now a deep-water basin along Biscayne Boulevard known as the Florida East Coast Railway slip. County commissioners would eventually have to weigh in on a deal if it were to involve a land swap with the city.

"After discussions with Miami officials (past and present), residents of the area and a host of planner and activists, I have concluded that the FEC slip is not a desirable site for the stadium," Suarez said in a statement Friday. The stadium wouldn't add anything to the waterfront but "another concrete wall" and could create parking and traffic congestion, he said.

Instead, Suarez endorsed a Beckham stadium next to Marlins Park in Little Havana -- a location Beckham's business partner, Simon Fuller, has derided as "spiritually tainted" by the unpopular public financing deal for the Miami Marlins.

Suarez's office even included a rendering of a possible Little Havana soccer stadium. The rendering, Suarez said, was provided to him by former Miami Mayor Manny Diaz, who has slammed the FEC slip stadium proposal. Diaz could not be immediately reached for comment.

Read Suarez's full statement after the jump.