BLAINE, Minn. – (April 20, 2017) – The National Sports Center is 26 years old. It’s 600-acre campus is full of sports fields, hockey rinks and is the training home for the newest team in Major League Soccer. Now the National Sports Center is beginning the process of planning what its next 30 years will look like and is seeking community insight.
The center is the world’s largest amateur sports facility. As planning for the next 30 years takes place, spokesperson, Barclay Kruse said the voices of many stakeholders are being sought out.
We’re trying to talk to everyone who we consider a stakeholder, almost all of those are local Minnesota people and business’, sports groups that use the facilities,” Kruse explained. “We’re involving national governing bodies that come here and use the campus and are office somewhere else like Colorado Springs.”
Kruse also mentioned some of these national governing boards have sent Olympic teams to train at the sports center in the past as well.
“USA Hockey uses this facility extensively, USU Soccer, Minnesota youth soccer association has definite interest in what gets built here, and when it gets built and how they can use it,” he said.
The National Sports Center began a series of focus groups this week, meeting with government officials, tourism groups and professional sports leaders to hear their opinions on the campus and what could be improved.
“Some of the consistent things we’ve heard are having a more contiguous look to the campus so when people arrive here they know they’ve arrived,” Kruse said. “Gateway signage, some sort of monument that tells people ‘you are at the national Sports Center,’ way finding signage, which is basically directional signage around the campus, better identification of the buildings because we are not just one building we are a collection of different facilities that are relatively close to each other but are different buildings.”
Another one of their buildings poses problems to new visitors all the time.
The Schwan Super Rink eight sheet ice arena was built in two pieces four sheets in 1998 four more sheets in 2006 and for new customers who’ve never been here before, they get back on rink eight, and they have a hard time negotiating back to the front door of the building,” Kruse said.
And a lot of their campus is pieced together. Their soccer fields are divided by 105th Avenue, which sees 50 mile and hour traffic. The National Sports Center has grown to 54 soccer fields, up from the 24 they had when they opened with the state’s help 1990.
“State of Minnesota owns the campus, we were created by a state agency called the Minnesota Amateur Sports Commission which still exists, they are essentially the landlords of the National Sports Center, but the National Sports Center is managed by a non-profit corporation, the National Sports Center Foundation and it is a self supporting facility,” Kruse said. “We don’t get operating subsidy from the state of Minnesota.”
Now, with their 54 soccer fields, 8 hockey rinks, velodrome, golf course and more, they see about 4 million visitors a year. Those visitors make a significant economic impact on the area.
“Over 50 million dollars a year, interestingly about half of that 50 million dollar economic impact, Comes from one event: the Schwan’s USA Cup in July, which is just over 30 million dollars,” Kruse said.
One way they are looking to grow and expand that economic impact is by considering new and emerging sports.
“We are very interested in finding opportunities to bring new sports on the campus, we’ve been a leader in some of those emerging sports like ultimate, ultimate disc for ultimate frisky, we’re doing more and more rugby events, we’re doing a national championship rugby tournament this summer and rugby’s growing sports,” he said.
How ever it grows, the Sports Center hopes to identify the needs of its sports consumers, while also finding ways to meet future community needs, including the needs of people who currently don’t use the facilities.
“Families that come to our tournaments and events are here to compete so they’re are all in here, so they’re very focused on what they’re doing and that’s great because they have a huge investment in the National Sports Center and the programs we run here.” Kruse explained. “If people are not involved in those tournaments, we are not on their radar screen at all.”
In the future, The Sports Center wants to find a way to make its campus a useful and valuable local asset for the entire community.
There are a couple ways for you to get involved in the master planning process. There is a survey that you can take online to share your opinions, or you can attend a Town Hall meeting on Tuesday, May 2 at 6 p.m. at the National Sports Center’s Welcome Center.
