In the past few weeks, the New York Times published a story about the high-end club trend in sports venues, followed by a New Yorker piece examining the long-term gentrification of stadiums.
In between, I was interviewed by a Town and Country magazine reporter for a story they’re working on about how sports teams are catering to their richest fans. Mass media has noticed the elevation of sports venue premium spaces.
Also, this is the final SBJ Facilities newsletter for 2025. I’ll be back Monday, Jan. 12.
North Carolina hired Populous to do a feasibility study on its options for the Dean Smith Center and is issuing an RFQ/RFP in January seeking a master developer partner for the Carolina North project. That 250-acre site could be where UNC builds a new basketball arena. Getty Images
Last week was a pivotal one in the college athletics mixed-use development world, with Ole Miss and Texas launching RFP processes that will undoubtedly draw significant interest.
North Carolina is not far behind, with plans to issue an RFP in January seeking a master developer for Carolina North, the 250-acre parcel two miles north of the university’s main campus. Carolina North isn’t as clear cut an athletics-related project as those at Ole Miss and Texas, but the development has been pegged as a potential landing spot for a new Tar Heel basketball arena.
To finally jumpstart the Carolina North development process — the concept was first publicly mentioned in 2008! — the university hired RCLCo in the fall to consult on planning and implementation strategies and plans.
An update given to the UNC Board of Trustees’ University Affairs committee in mid-November noted that the Carolina North funding mix will vary by project, but it could include public-private partnerships in addition to fully university-funded efforts. The development will, or could, entail:
Undergraduate and graduate student housing
Workforce housing
Retail
Hotel
New athletics facilities
Expanded academic and research programs and facilities
UNC’s Board of Trustees — chaired by former Wasserman, NBA G League exec and Vanderbilt AD (and Chapel Hill grad) Malcolm Turner — also heard a pitch in July from a group of investors interested in putting a cricket oval at the new development.
Populous produced a site study for the university over a year ago, which targeted five potential new sites, including Carolina North, as well as addressing whether the Tar Heel basketball’s 39-year-old Dean Smith Center could be suitably renovated.
Takeaways from a week of announcements
Whether the Carolina North project includes an arena or not, the developer RFQ/RFP will draw major interest. If the scope does include a new basketball arena, it will provide an excellent test case for a theory I’ve been hearing: There are no stronger brands right now than those in sports, and when they’re associated with a fixed place and experience, they become intellectual property. Carolina basketball is easily one of the strongest brands in college athletics, and a new arena at Carolina North could incorporate Tar Heel basketball culture and history, as well as the Jordan brand, in a meaningful and, frankly, incredible way. It’s easy to envision a state-of-the-art Carolina basketball museum and an immersive Jordan experience sitting steps away from any new arena.
At Ole Miss, the stadium-adjacent project proposal is more standard college-athletics development fare, but a few similarities between the Carolina North project and what Texas proposed — a new, small-scale arena and athlete student housing, both next to Moody Center — jump out to me. Both RFPs include (potential) sports venues and some basic mixed-use real estate elements (retail, for example). But both also include student housing, which is a distinct developer skillset and market, and in UNC’s case, the university wants to create an entirely new section of campus. North Carolina’s campus is idyllic. It’s also 236 years old. Will UNC find a developer or team of developers interested in and capable of taking on that kind of project while also proficient in navigating the public university realm (and all its incumbent intricacies)?
Another thought: These RFPs make the strategy behind Hunt’s acquisition of Carter, which I reported earlier this year, suddenly clearer. Carter brings sports-related mixed-use development expertise to the table, while Hunt is an established student-housing developer. Will we see more such business combinations, whether acquisitions, mergers or partnerships, as the real estate industry tries to jump on the sports-adjacent mixed-use opportunity? Or will we see just project-by-project consortiums? Either way, it’s clear that these college mixed-use projects require some distinct skills that aren’t required in pro sports.
Regarding the Texas RFP, my first thought was whether Oak View Group would compete for the project. Recall that it was the Moody Center project that, seven years later, landed OVG co-founder and former CEO Tim Leiweke in hot water with the Department of Justice, until his, well, let’s call it unexpected pardon by President Donald Trump earlier this month. That said, OVG’s pioneering public-private partnership with the university on Moody Center appears to have been a categorical success, instantly becoming one of the top grossing concert venues of its size in the world. OVG brought development and operational capabilities that few firms possess, but it’s unclear if OVG is as eager to develop new venues in the post-Leiweke era under new CEO Chris Granger.
Snow covered the grass at kickoff at the Minnesota United's Allianz Field, with underground heating coils dissipating it as the game progressed. Matt Blewett/USA TODAY NETWORK
Since Thanksgiving, 17 inches of snow dropped on Chicago, while Minneapolis-St. Paul received roughly 14. Five inches fell on Kansas City, and even Columbus got four the first week of December.
Now, imagine it’s 2027 and MLS is halfway through its season.
I was curious what effects the MLS season calendar shift — which will pivot the league’s season to the late summer-to-spring calendar used by most of the rest of the professional soccer world — would have on stadium operations and business. The Polar Vortex that recently gripped the northern half of the U.S. for several weeks gave a frosty preview.
While more than 90% of the MLS season calendar will remain the same when the league makes the shift for the 2027-28 season, there will still be impacts, especially in markets with colder climates.
The snow would have been no issue for the playing surface in Columbus because ScottsMiracle-Gro Field has heating under the grass. The newer cold climate MLS stadiums, such as Allianz Field, all do, as will future stadiums, like the Chicago Fire’s.
It’s a bigger issue away from the field, says Columbus Crew VP/Operations Scot Obergefell, whether for fans in the stands — we’ll likely see more climate-controlled spaces and heated seats — or basic venue operations. This includes insulating water fountains and beer lines so they don’t freeze and winterizing walkways and staircases.
“From a stadium standpoint,” said Sports Illustrated Stadium VP/Operations Shaun Oliver, “our biggest priority will be guest experience.”
Older cold weather venues, like Sports Illustrated Stadium in northern New Jersey, have sub-air systems under the field to help pull rainwater out of the playing surface, and these have been common for more than a decade. But in some venues, those systems will likely have to be replaced with mechanisms that can handle the glycol needed to produce warm air.
Training will also be an issue for most MLS clubs, even further south.
Real Salt Lake’s 42-acre Zions Bank Training Center includes two full-sized indoor fields and is one of MLS’ few pure indoor training facilities. There are some shared ones in Minnesota (the National Sports Training Center) and Charlotte (the under-construction Panthers facility), and for some clubs, it may be sufficient to rent indoor training space from other sports organizations. We may also see clubs inflating indoor training bubbles or installing heating beneath training pitches in the coming years. Red Bulls’ under-construction training facility includes four heated outdoor fields.
Seasonal change
Open summer months will create a clear-cut concert opportunity for most MLS venues, especially those that don’t have NWSL co-tenants. A spate of concerts or festivals could be held in June, with the grass playing surface replaced just once, at the end of the concert season.
But growing and maintaining grass will be a bigger ongoing challenge, for two main reasons. First, the season will now kick off in August; any person with a nice yard knows that’s not grass-growing season.
Second, any venues that are home to another soccer team — i.e., an NWSL club — will essentially have their offseason playing surface recovery period erased. That’ll put more stress on natural grass surfaces throughout the league, especially at shared natural grass venues in colder parts of the country like Salt Lake City, D.C., and Harrison, N.J.
Real Salt Lake and Utah Royals enjoy one of the few — maybe the only — indoor training facility in MLS and NWSL, the Zions Bank Training Center. That indoor training space will become more important in MLS after the league adjusted its season calendar to include more cold weather. Miller Sports & Entertainment
Victus Advisors founder Brian Connolly launches Feasibly, an AI tool for market studies.
It can take Victus Advisors three to four months to complete an in-depth market feasibility study for its clients. The end product usually costs those universities, municipalities or stadium authorities (typical clients) between $50,000 and $100,000.
Roughly a year ago, Victus Advisors founder Brian Connolly and several partners began playing around with AI to see what utility it could have in their business. Turns out, quite a lot.
They spent the year since building AI-powered software, learning how to use it and teaching, structuring, and training it with their Victus methodologies and proprietary data sets.
“You can’t just slap a website over ChatGPT and get a report that is thorough with detail, verifiably sourced and accurate,” Connolly said.
By April they had developed a proof of concept and felt it needed more attention. Connolly has shifted his entire focus to the new undertaking (Principal and Research Director Walter Franco is now running Victus), and last week, Victus launched Feasibly.
“You don’t need the Victus Advisors approach and cost,” Connolly said, “but we have this other service that can provide it much cheaper and faster without any loss of accuracy.”
The feasibility study business is booming these days, and recent Victus clients OCVibe and the New Aloha Stadium Entertainment District are emblematic of the sports real estate building boom. But the timeframe and resources involved with Victus’ typical deep-dive approach don’t make sense for every client’s situation.
Feasibly’s software platform can produce reports in hours or days that cost around $10,000. The business model uses either an à la carte reports or two subscription models, one of which includes open access to Feasibly’s data sources to create as many reports as desired.
This could be useful for developers, investors, teams, universities or municipalities that want an initial stress test of their project concept but maybe aren’t yet ready to drop six figures on a more detailed study.
Connolly, Franco, and Eric Habermas created a new Delaware C corp and put founding capital into Feasibly and this summer raised a preseed round that included more than 35 investors and raised just over a million dollars. That’s supporting continued software development, some launch marketing, and six employees.
They onboarded their first clients in November to start beta testing and have received more interest since the Dec. 1 launch.
“This has been the most fascinating year of my life,” Connolly said. “I’m so excited about what this can do.”
Army and Navy faced off this Saturday at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, and fans of both service arms could enjoy food served in military vehicles and vessels. This includes chicken tenders in a Humvee or these crab dip nachos housed in a destroyer and sold for $29.99. Here I am, reporting for duty to unload cargo!
A fascinating story from Wired pinning down that roughly 90% of Parkinson’s disease cases seem to be related to environmental chemical toxin exposure. One researcher expressed the need for an environmental exposure study of the scale of the Human Genome project, which didn’t unlock disease cures as many thought it would.
Texas issued a request for proposals (RFP) on Wednesday seeking a development team to build an arena and student-athlete housing on four acres next to Moody Center. The smaller scale arena would be home to the university’s powerhouse women’s volleyball program.
NYCFC selected Legends Global to run food and beverage at Etihad Park, the MLS club’s $780 million stadium opening in 2027. The stadium’s F&B program will mirror N.Y.’s diverse food culture, especially Queens.
