In late 2020, Homefield LLC struck a deal with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and (City of) Kansas City, Kansas to redevelop the Schlitterbahn Waterpark site.
Robb Heineman, founder and CEO of Homefield, discussed what’s in store for the site with grand plans to revolutionize the youth sports experience nationwide during last week’s CCIM Kansas City virtual webinar. CCIM president and Highlands Development Group president, Chris Williams, CCIM, moderated the discussion.
Heineman served as CEO of Sporting Kansas City for 12 years, stepping away from the position in late 2017. He started exploring businesses outside of Sporting, including the $20 billion youth sports industry, which, Heineman said, is growing faster than any of the professional leagues.
The youth sporting event experience is, in Heineman’s opinion, generally held in substandard locations, lacking in guest experience and not focused on player development.
“What could we do to impose some of the things that we’ve learned in the professional sports industry around guest experience, around player experience? And, honestly we really look no further than Top Golf where they basically took a $10 bucket of balls, they put it in a beautiful building with good food and beverage, good data capture, a high-end experience and have created a multibillion dollar franchise both on a real estate and operating basis. And so we said ‘could we go do something like that,’” said Heineman.
Heineman said the objective of Homefield is to build a pro-player experience for amateur athletes on a multi-sport basis.
“We’re not focused on any one sport. We do court sports, turf sports… we do e-sports. It’s something that we’re focusing on and trying to see if we can go build a nationwide network of locations around the country,” Heineman said.
Currently, Homefield is working on projects in 12 cities; including Chicago, Indianapolis, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Columbus, Dayton, Raleigh, Charlotte, St. Petersburg and Austin. Kansas City, said Heineman, is Homefield’s flagship location.
The common thread in all of Homefield’s developments is its signature 240,000 SF pre-engineered metal building, with sections for turf sports and hard court sports with a “central spine” which has all the support services.
“What you’ll see when you come into our buildings. . . will be much more like a stadium environment where you’ll go up to the second level, you’ll be sitting in kind of seating tubs overlooking the different venues and you’ll have all the support services behind, whether that’s food and beverage or retail. We do want you when you’re inside of these buildings to feel like you’re in much more of a stadium environment than you’re in just a typical youth sports gymnasium,” said Heineman.
Homefield’s Kansas City location will encompass 400 acres, which includes 300 acres of the former Schlitterbahn site as well as another 100 acres that Homefield is assembling from the Unified Government and from private sellers.
Heineman said many communities view giving incentives for youth sports as a catalyst for economic development. Heineman estimated that in most of the deals on which Homefield is working, 50 percent of its capital stack around the Homefield building is incentivized.
Homefield is using STAR bonds financing for its Kansas City project, which will allow the project to capture sales tax revenue to pay off the bonds.
“Across this 400 acres, we’ve got a number of different STAR bond project areas, all with different clocks and with different kinds of sales tax considerations, so we’ve had to be pretty prescriptive on how we’re going to put all this together,” Heineman said.
Heineman said to date, Homefield has a 240-room hotel and several destination retailers under contract as well as a multifamily deal under contract and in planning and zoning. He said Homefield is talking with medical office, senior housing and grocery retail about coming to the site.
“We’re out on site today doing demolition of the former water park, doing asbestos remediation in some of the structures and we’ll start bringing those down, but we’re moving aggressively to try to do deals out here because for us private spend and sales tax creation are really the two life bloods to what we’re up to,” he said.
But Heineman believes the real catalyst for the site will be Homefield, which will focus on baseball. Heineman said Homefield is in conversations with a national baseball tournament operator, which, if Homefield can make a deal, would generate almost 75,000 room nights a year.
Heineman said the first phase of the project will focus on the Homefield developments—the Homefield building, a 6 to 7-acre water park and the baseball complex—which Homefield hopes will start to open in the fall of 2022.
Image credit: Populous