Indoor sports complex in the works

FORT COLLINS — In January of 2003, Phil Ebersole agreed to coach a competitive youth baseball team for the ensuing spring season.

Then he set about looking for a practice facility.

“I couldn’t find a place to practice unless I hired an instructor” with access to a facility, Ebersole said.

He gave up on the hunt. But Ebersole’s futile search inspired a new quest — building his own indoor facility.

On March 8, Ebersole will break ground on a $2.6 million, 32,000-square-foot sports complex in northeast Fort Collins that caters to “turf sports” teams. Ebersole expects to open The Edge Sports Center by Labor Day.

The facility is planned for the Interchange Business Park at the northeast corner of Interstate 25 and Colorado Highway 14.

Market statistics tell Ebersole he’s offering the right service at the right time.

In the Northern Colorado-southeast Wyoming market, Ebersole’s counted at least 400 competitive sports teams accounting for 5,700 players in the turf sports of baseball, lacrosse, soccer and softball.

Add recreational teams and growing adult leagues and the squeeze on practice space — both indoor and outdoor — has reached crisis proportions.

Ebersole’s business plan is based on renting the facility on an hourly basis to organized teams for practice, or to independent instructors for clinics. The artificial grass surface, similar to that installed at French Field in Fort Collins, will be lined for baseball-softball and soccer uses.

Still, he anticipates demand from lower-profile sports like lacrosse, rugby, field hockey and even indoor football.

The Poudre School District has approved a second high school lacrosse team in Fort Collins for next school year. Also, a new professional indoor football team — the Colorado Venom — is scheduled to begin its inaugural season this spring.

“I don’t know where they are practicing yet, but I’m going to give them a call,” he said of the football club.

The Edge Sports Center is designed for a 180-foot-by-121-foot playing surface, and includes plans for pro shop, workout room and meeting room.

Depending on team demand, Ebersole said he could envision leagues for soccer and youth baseball.

The Interstate 25 location is also meaningful. The site will be within 30 minutes of the majority of Northern Colorado’s population.

“We fully expect this to be a regional facility and to get people from Cheyenne and Greeley and Longmont,” he said.

Private indoor sports facilities, driven largely by the demand for indoor soccer, are a business phenomenon. According to EZFacility.com, a company that develops scheduling management software for sports facilities, there are 500 indoor soccer arenas in the United States alone.

Growth in the indoor arena sector is largely in the northern United States and Canada, where weather impinges on spring and fall sports. But that’s not exclusive.

“California does have a number of facilities,´ said Paul Deveral, president of Long Island, N.Y.-based EZFacilities.com.

Also, a new 48,000-square-foot facility — with similar amenities as Ebersole’s new project — opened in January in Richmond, Va.

Locally, three new indoor sports facilities have opened in Boulder County over the past year, all with some form of soccer use.

In Fort Collins, the 52,000-square-foot O.D.’s Sports Crossing, 218 Smokey Drive, has been in business since 1996. The popular facility, which caters to both indoor soccer and in-line hockey leagues, often features games at midnight to accommodate demand.

Unlike O.D.’s, The Edge Sports Center will not include dasher boards for soccer.

“My emphasis is primarily on practice for the outdoor game,” he said.

One financial underpinning to Ebersole’s business plan is the expenditures for competitive youth sports. High-level select soccer teams, for instance, can have team budgets approaching $10,000 a year. Top baseball club teams can spend up to $4,000. So, spending a few hundred dollars a year for weatherproof practice time is reasonable, Ebersole said.

Ebersole comes by some of his knowledge as the father of two competitive teen-aged athletes, as well as his own coaching experience. The former Hewlett-Packard Co. executive took an early retirement package from the company in 2002.

He hasn’t finalized his rate structure, but Ebersole said his business plan calls for breaking even at the beginning of The Edge Sport Center’s second winter.

Flexibility is the key to the business model. For instance, the arena features “drop-down” divider walls to allow multiple teams at once for soccer. Baseball amenities include temporary batting cages and bullpens.

Depending on demand, the arena could be fashioned for baseball-softball four days a week and soccer-lacrosse three days. But scheduling would be adaptable.

“That’s one of the things the bankers really liked about this,” Ebersole said. “I didn’t have to accurately predict that.”

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