Schwartz: It's more what it does for the area. All sports centers tend to be in converted industrial buildings, primarily in industrial areas, where people can train for basketball and volleyball. They're mostly in Garden Grove, Anaheim and there's one in Irvine. On the last available land parcel in Ladera Ranch, we decided to develop three concepts in three individual condos: one with 16,000 square feet of office space for my growing company, a self-storage facility next door and the Ladera Sports Center. We saw a need in South County for a state-of-the-art facility for training athletes from second-graders through high school in basketball and volleyball. There are many athletes coming out of Southern California, and we wanted to build a facility worthy of that training. Parents are always driving to tournaments, spending money on concessions—some facilities won't let you bring your Starbucks coffee into the place, but this one will—so we want it to have state-of-the-art amenities for them.

GlobeSt.com: What features will it have?

Schwartz: It's a quality-of-life issue. It will be air-conditioned and have at least a LEED-Gold designation. There will be solar panels and electric-car-charging stations, a strength-and-conditioning company, a nice overall concessions area, and it will be a nice place for parents who spend a lot of money on their kids who are in volleyball and basketball. It will fit up to 65 people comfortably on each court and will have more than 300 parking spaces because parking is always an issue with these places. We've also found that other facilities are very loud. Some parents and kids have very sensitive ears, and because some of the other competing facilities are industrial conversions, there is no noise reduction. We spent money for a noise-reduction system in there to reduce the noise level to one that won't be harmful to kids or adults.

Also, parents will be able to get online and watch the game remotely, and if their kid makes a nice shot they can buy a recording of the entire game on a hi-def video. It's another level of recruiting for high-level athletes. We're talking to a lot of sponsors and have a short list of sponsors looking to have naming rights on the facility, provide an exclusive beverage and sponsor each court. There will be nice, unique designs, and there will be a detailed marketing plan. We plan to bring 600,000 people through this facility on an annualized basis.

GlobeSt.com: Are you considering other types of development activities?

Schwartz: When you start to do mixed-use development with some special purpose or strategy, there are some initial challenges associated with that. It's not the type of facility you could build in a lot of areas in the country. It has to have the right demographics, the right growth of kids and the right athletes and be a hotbed for athletes. It's not something a lot of people would do in a lot of different areas. We're not looking to prototype around the country, but it will be incredibly successful because of the location and demographics. It has great positioning, and there's not a lot of aggregate competition. There's not a lot of industrial space in the Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano area to convert to this type of space; there are high barriers of entry to doing this.