Earliter this month, officials held a ceremonial ground-breaking to mark the start of construction of the Chesterfield Sports Complex, the first indoor volleyball and basketball complex in the St. Louis market.
Located at 150 N. Eatherton Road in Chesterfield Valley, Missouri, St. Louis resident and NBA star Bradley Beal made a surprise appearance at the event. Bradley Beal Elite, the top-ranked NIKE sponsored club in the Midwest, has committed to be the basketball tenant for the facility. Other tenants are High Performance and Stratman Sports for volleyball and CNR Basketball. The facility will be owned and operated by nonprofit Chesterfield Sports Association.
“For 25 years, I have been hearing the word ‘no’ a lot in terms of St. Louis having something like this. This is special. It has taken a lot of people a lot of time to get it to this point,” said Scott Mebruer, chief executive officer and club director of High Performance, St. Louis’ premier volleyball club. “Generationally, our youth will be able to play in this for our lifetimes.”
Scheduled to open early 2023, five major events have already been scheduled, including a gymnastics invitational in March, three NXT PRO Sports basketball tournaments and the Ozark Mountain National Martial Arts Tournament in July.
The ground-breaking was stalled two weeks because of major rainfall on the originally scheduled date. During the last week, general contractor Keystone Construction Company raised the 40-foot tall concrete tilt-up panels that were cast on site over the last several weeks. In the coming weeks, 302-tons of steel will be erected.
The developer on this project is Mia Rose Holdings. The architect is mw Weber Architects and the civil engineer is Stock & Associates Consulting Engineers, Inc. The project was funded by State Bank.
“The sports complex will offer the full range of youth sport services and amenities to develop student athletes. Ace Performance Lab, owned and operated by U.S. gold medal Olympic volleyball player Scott Touzinsky, will lease the facility’s 4,000-square-foot performance center and provide both performance training and recovery equipment for youth athletes. As the facility’s medical service provider, Mercy will provide athletic trainers, physical therapists and sports medicine physicians.
The multi-court, 97,000-square-foot sports complex will attract an estimated 900,000 visitors each year to its clinics, camps, leagues and tournaments. The facility is projected to generate more than $3.5 million in local annual spending and generate 10,000 hotel room nights a year. An estimated 1,000 short- and long-term jobs will be created for construction workers, coaches, referees, trainers, concession and maintenance workers. More than 1,000 youth athletes will practice and train during the week and over 2,500 athletes will play in league and tournament games each weekend.
Nine basketball courts will convert to 18 volleyball courts and be equipped with Olympic-level flooring and HD/4K streaming cameras. A sophisticated LED lighting system will be programmable with various lighting levels and colors to best illuminate basketball or volleyball action. Additional amenities include a fitness area, full food service operations, comfortable spectator seating courtside, second-floor mezzanine for game viewing, lounge areas and multipurpose rooms for team rooms, meetings and classes.
Due to the lack of safe and adequate facilities locally, local basketball and volleyball clubs currently must use multiple locations, hours away, to meet their needs and tournament organizers turn to bigger venues in other Midwestern cities.
