Sports Complex Goes Beyond Turf and Ice
A partnership of local investors and developers joined forces to form iSports Cedar Park Ltd., which is building the 206,000-square-foot complex on 15.4 acres at US Highway 183A Toll and Scottsdale Drive.
CEDAR PARK, TX—Construction began last week on iSports Cedar Park, a large indoor/outdoor sports complex with two hockey rinks and two turf fields. A partnership of local investors and developers joined forces to form iSports Cedar Park Ltd., which is building the 206,000-square-foot complex on 15.4 acres off the southeast corner of US Highway 183A Toll and Scottsdale Drive.
The vision calls for a mix of family entertainment, sports medicine, retail space and restaurants to complement each other in a single location. Construction is anticipated to take a little more than a year and the facility may open as early as next summer.
Key tenants include Chaparral Ice, which will operate the fields, and D1 Training Group of Central Texas. This training group has trained many of the nation’s top college and professional athletes such as Peyton Manning, Chris Paul, Tim Tebow and Von Miller.
“From the onset, our ultimate goal has been to create a family-oriented destination where physical fitness is fun for people of all ages, abilities and athletic interests,” said Eric Perardi, founding principal of Perardi Development, the lead developer within the partnership. Perardi also coaches local youth hockey teams. “Today, our vision takes a giant symbolic step forward. But the reality is this is the culmination of a ton of hard work and dedication by a great number of people–not to mention a fundamental belief in our vision.”
iSports Cedar Park’s principals include Perardi, JP Newman and Adrian Lufschanowski of Thrive FP, and John Trube. Jaxon Shipley, a former wide receiver for the University of Texas football team who now owns Shipley Performance, will focus on specialized youth football training through an alliance with the D1 Training franchise.
The complex also helps the region’s leading ice rink operator, Chaparral Ice, not only with more capacity, but other offerings as well. The expansion will bring two new regulation-sized National Hockey League ice rinks for youth and travel hockey, figure skating and curling programs, as well as skating for the general public. Furthermore, Chaparral will also operate an indoor and an outdoor turf field. The fields will be utilized for soccer, lacrosse, football and numerous other sports.
Perardi said a feasibility report prepared for iSports Development by Strategic Performance Group found the 10-mile radius around the site offers compelling population and income demographics.
“In 2017, the 10-mile ring’s population was 394,231 residents, with an anticipated increase to 449,365 in 2022,” he tells GlobeSt.com. “Likewise, average household income for the same radius was $103,345 in 2017, with an anticipated increase to $121,974 in 2022.”
The sports economy in general is booming in the United States. Time magazine recently featured a report titled “How kids’ sports became a $15 billion industry”. This statistic was provided from WinterGreen Research, a private firm that tracks the industry.
That $15 billion includes everything from travel to private coaching to apps that organize leagues and livestream games. HBO’s Real Sports also reported that families spent more than $10 billion on the road as part of the youth sports tourism industry in 2016.