SBJ Facilities: A new player eyes the mixed-use boom

Good morning, and welcome to the SBJ Facilities newsletter on its new Thursday publishing date. It’ll be running every other Thursday from this point forward.

Part of my trip this week to Chicago was spent at Northwestern moderating a panel for the Kellogg Real Estate Conference and Venture Competition. This discussion about sports-adjacent mixed-use development featured Joe Myhra (COO, United Center), Eric Nordness (managing principal, Marquee Development) and Ari Glass (head of real estate, Mansueto Office). The panel, in front of a room full of serious real estate industry folks, was the first focused on sports in the conference’s 12-year history.

Roughly six months after Taylor Gray and Nick Benjamin were part of the group awarded the development rights to Tennessee’s Neyland Entertainment District, Gray and Benjamin reached out to executives from REV Entertainment.

During their previous tenures with Cordish Companies, Benjamin and Gray worked closely with REV, a Texas Rangers subsidiary, on the development of Texas Live, a mixed-use development surrounding the Rangers’ Globe Life Field, before they formed their own real estate firm called Vela Development Partners.

From Benjamin and Gray’s initial outreach in early 2025, a bigger idea emerged, then crystallized. REV and Vela created a joint venture called RVX Ventures, with the goal of pursuing the national sports-anchored entertainment districts market. REV’s undisclosed investment in Vela and the formation of RVX is the largest it’s ever made.

“We see both the college sports space and professional sports real estate development space as a large-scale, long-term opportunity,” said Benjamin. “And we think we’ve put together a team with a lot of horsepower and talent to go take advantage of that opportunity over the next five-to-10 years.”

The Neyland project is RVX Ventures’ first, as it seeks to invest in, develop and operate other districts of varying scope and scale in both the college and pro sports ranks.

In the mixed-use/entertainment sector, Vela is a full-service developer, handling everything from investment and capital to design and construction of the district to operations. It’ll create the concepts, then staff and operate them.

Vela has a string of active high-rise apartment-tower projects across the American Sun Belt, projects that REV is now involved with, too, through RVX Ventures. Benjamin’s and Gray’s sports development experience also includes Kansas City’s Power & Light District and St. Louis’ Ballpark Village.

REV is the Rangers’ 5-year-old sports and entertainment subsidiary that handles all of the MLB team’s ancillary business, such as sponsorship sales, team and venue operations and event hosting and booking, expertise it’ll bring to RVX Ventures. REV’s firsthand experience comes from involvement with the design, construction and operations of Globe Life Field, the surrounding Texas Live district and other minor league facilities in its portfolio.

“These guys are world-class developers,” REV President and 2025 SBJ Forty Under 40 honoree Sean Decker said of Vela. “We believe that what we do on the partnership side and on the event and programming side pairs really well with what they do.”

RVX launches with more than 30 team members and will add more as it lands projects. That will include on-site staff fully focused on generating nontraditional revenue.

“Looking at the calendar and finding opportunities for festival creation, concert opportunities, special events … you name it," said REV Entertainment SVP Jared Schrom. “We will implement a similar strategy that we have here in Arlington to make sure they’re active 365.”

RVX Ventures’ board of directors includes Decker and Schrom from REV and Benjamin, Gray and Kevin Davis (Vela), with Jake Miller serving as the new entity’s COO.

Developing trend

Expect to see more tie-ups like this, as the worlds of sports, real estate, private and institutional capital and municipal government all zero in on the sports-adjacent mixed-use concept. RVX has what it feels is a key advantage over most of the entities that will emerge from that scramble.

“This team has done it together. We’ve been in the foxhole together. Texas Live was not a small development,” said Gray. “Any two big companies, or a team owner and developer, can decide that they’re going to do this, and it sounds like a good idea. But you’ve got to evaluate it on the second one. They’re pretty hard to do and there is no replacement for the experience.”

As we head into May, let’s catch up on 10 of the big projects happening across the U.S. and Canada:

A’s ballpark: The A’s are on track to open their Bjarke Ingels Group/HNTB-designed Las Vegas stadium in 2028. Concrete has been poured for the lower level, main concourse, and the six buttresses that hold up the unique roof structure. The seating bowl’s steel frame is being installed (Mortenson and McCarthy are the contractors), and roof construction will begin this summer.

AlumniFi Field: Demolition of the former hospital where USL Championship club Detroit City FC’s $153 million, 15,000-seat, HOK-designed stadium will be built is nearly complete. The club landed an early naming-rights deal last August to financially support the cause.

Bank of America Stadium: The city of Charlotte received state approval to issue $650 million in debt to kickstart an $800 million renovation of the stadium that’s visible from the break room of SBJ’s HQ. Fan-facing work (Clark and D.A. Everett are the contractors) should start in early 2027. The HOK-designed project’s target completion date is 2030.

Bay FC training facility: The striking design of this facility on Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay is on time to open ahead of the 2027 NWSL season. The building’s foundation is being laid, with a topping-out ceremony set for mid-June. Field construction and sod installation will begin in early fall.

Belmont Park: The $455 million rebuild of Belmont Park is (read this in your best horseracing announcer voice) coming around the turn. ... The new building (designed by Populous) is fully enclosed, with its roof and canopy are substantially complete, and interiors are the focus ahead of a Sept. 18 reopening.

EverBank Stadium: Jacksonville’s uniquely ambitious renovation is kicking into serious gear, headlined by the offseason installation of a hundred-plus steel trusses surrounding the stadium that will eventually hold up its new roof canopy. In-bowl demolition to open the stadium’s four corners has begun, and attendance this coming season will be capped at 42,500. The Jags will play the 2027 season at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, with the project wrapping up in 2028.

Memorial Stadium North End Zone: Missouri’s $250 million renovation of its football stadium is on pace to be ready for the 2026 season. Recent work includes the setting of the “Rock M,” a focal point cultural feature of the university’s project.

Scotia Place: Calgary and the Flames’ roughly $577-million new arena opens in 2027. The seating bowl structure is largely finished, and mega-trusses that hold up the roof, rigging, and the retractable scoreboard are being installed.

Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium: Significant progress is being made on the three-year, $220-million project designed by Populous and built by Barton Malow. Interior finishes are being applied, including millwork and food service installation, with completion expected by August for the ’26 football season.

Victory Heights: This project cruised along in the background, even after one of its champions, former Pitt AD Heather Lyke, left the school in 2024. The $240-million, multisport facility (16 of Pitt’s 19 sports will be based or play there) is nearing, and on pace for, its summer finish line, with Pitt athletes recently getting their first look inside.

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The canopy over Inter Miami’s Nu Stadium is a first of its kind in the U.S.

The tension ring covering was designed by Schlaich Bergermann Partner. Better known as sbp, the German structural engineering firm has offices in the U.S., including its New York outpost helmed by Michael Stein.

Stein hopped on a call to explain the difference between this kind of cable net structure — what he deemed a bicycle wheel — and the more commonly seen “tennis racket” concept that was (or will be) used for full roofs at SoFi Stadium, (new) Nissan Stadium and (renovated) EverBank Stadium.

Our conversation clawed through the engineering weeds so that hopefully, you, the reader, and I, the writer, don’t get stuck in them. Some key things to know:

The two key forces involved in this type of structure are tension and compression. Though they are opposite forces (tension pulls, compression smushes), they often work together, such as in tennis rackets and bicycle wheels.

The tennis racket roof design is easier to design and build because the cables involved are stretched between two solid structures (the opposing sides of the stadium). The bicycle wheel concept is more complicated, because the inner ring must be created in a manner that gives the outer rings something against which to exert their force.

“The forces are balanced out so everything is either fully tensioned or in pure compression,” said Stein. “That makes these structures very efficient and also very distinct.”

The inner ring doesn’t have to be a circle. It can take many shapes, said Stein, citing Tottenham Hotspur Stadium’s egg form or the Maracana Stadium’s perfect circle. The key is to form-find the covering, in other words, find the ideal shape that achieves an equilibrium of tension and compression. When sbp joined the Nu Stadium project, its engineers shaved 30% off the canopy cost by merely tweaking the geometry approximately six feet and finding the best form, Stein said.

Cable net structures are cheaper than traditional cantilevered steel-based covering. It’s cheaper in part because it’s lighter. In an NFL or Premier League-sized stadium, the depth of the roof/canopy could be 150 to 200 feet, resulting in easily double the tonnage when using a cantilevered structure. That heavier structure translates into much larger foundations, bigger equipment, and slower installations, leading to higher costs and quickly becoming the biggest investment in the stadium.

The concept is not new, seeing use globally for three or four decades, Stein said. It’s featured in dozens of significant venues, especially European soccer stadiums, where it covers fans from wetter weather. Like those, the Nu Stadium canopy covers all of its roughly 25,000 fans.

Cable structures are only now emerging in the U.S., in part because designers haven’t always looked beyond the country’s borders for design or construction inspiration. Accordingly, cable structure-specific manufacturing and supply chains don’t exist here, requiring materials to be imported.

Piroshki are Russian buns, fried or baked and stuffed with fillings. Get your piroshki fill at T-Mobile Park this season, where the Mariners and Sodexo Live have brought a Pike Place Market staple since 1992, Piroshky Piroshky, into the ballpark. The fillings on offer include beef and cheese, potato and cheese, bacon cheeseburger, chocolate cream hazelnut, smoked salmon and jalapeño sausage, and most cost $13.99 (the jalapeño sausage is $14.99, and the chocolate cream hazelnut is $9.99). Would I eat delicious buns stuffed with delicious stuff? Da!

Can sponge cities save us from the coming floods? This New Yorker story, ahead of what’s looking like an aggressive summer weather season for parts of the U.S., is excellent and interesting.

• The price of attending live sports has risen more than 123% since 2000, according to the Consumer Price Index. And amid the industry’s venue-building boom, upper-deck seats are increasingly under the microscope — eliminated in some new stadiums and completely reimagined in renovations — as teams balance the costs of operating the most affordable seats in a venue with fears of pricing out fans.
• Speaking of the nosebleeds, my SBJ colleagues Ben Fischer and Tom Friend and I share our memories of sitting in the upper decks through the years.
• A federal jury in New York City determined on Wednesday that Live Nation operated as an illegal monopoly at both the federal and state levels, bringing a nearly two-month trial to an end and re-igniting a long-lingering question about a Live Nation-Ticketmaster breakup, reports SBJ’s Ethan Joyce.
• Louisville will host USA Gymnastics’ 2028 U.S. Olympic team trials, with 15 days of events from June 5-19, 2028, reports my SBJ colleague David Broughton, who this week also examined how this city at the intersection of the South and Midwest is also becoming a sports business pacesetter.
• The interior of the $78-million, 108,000-square-foot Indiana Fever Performance Center will feature the kind of spa-like design that’s becoming a cornerstone of women’s professional sports teams’ training hubs.
• The Harris County-Houston Sports Authority approved the $180 million renovation of Toyota Center, to be completed by the start of the 2027-28 season.
• The Rays, the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County agreed to an MOU that set a June 1 deadline for all sides to secure approvals that would allow for the franchise to build a $2.3 billion ballpark and privately funded adjacent mixed-use development in time for the start of the 2029 season, writes SBJ’s Mike Mazzeo.
• Augusta National Golf Club’s new Player Services Building was easily the most talked-about new piece of construction for this year’s Masters Tournament. But there was another new build that a small handful of industry executives were buzzing about on Wednesday, reports SBJ’s Josh Carpenter: the “Governors Lodge.”
• The UFL says it will launch its first expansion team since 2024 after signing a contract to use the MAPS 4 Multipurpose Stadium now under development in Oklahoma City, notes SBJ’s Ben Fischer.
• Monday’s SBJ online op-ed declares that mixed-use entertainment districts will define real estate development by 2040.