Investors plan $6M Grand Park Fieldhouse in Westfield

A private investment group led by Fishers entrepreneur Andy Card on Tuesday announced plans to build Grand Park Fieldhouse, a $6 million indoor facility for basketball and volleyball at Westfield’s Grand Park Sports Campus.

The 56,000-square-foot arena is slated to include six full-sized courts, a workout facility, locker rooms, offices and a cafe “focused on healthy eating options,” the city said in a news release.

Organizers also are in talks with a third-party sports-rehabilitation provider that could offer on-site services.

Located on 10 acres along 186th Street on the southern edge of the 400-acre youth sports megaplex, Grand Park Fieldhouse will have room to grow. If it proves as successful as expected, the facility could double in size, “which we anticipate happening,” Card said.

Construction is expected to begin next spring and should take about nine months to complete. Card said basketball tournaments already are tentatively scheduled for January through March 2016.

“Our intention is to be the cutting-edge indoor basketball/volleyball facility in the Midwest,” he said.

Fieldhouse activities will be overseen by Rod Sinn, who is relocating from Fort Wayne with his family to become its president of operations. Sinn is an AAU basketball dad who has been contemplating a similar venture for about 10 years, collecting ideas as he traveled the country with his son’s team.

“We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel,” he said. “We’re just trying to make it roll a lot smoother.”

The facility will host tournaments and league play, Card said, in addition to being available for local residents of all ages.

Card’s group acquired the property from private landowners Craig and Sandra Wood, whose Craig Wood Farm is now growing soybeans on the land. The Woods also own 20 acres just east of the site that’s available for development.

Grand Park Fieldhouse will be the second indoor facility at the sports complex. In June, officials announced plans for a $20 million indoor soccer facility along 191st Street. Westfield City Council approved development standards for the site on Monday.

Grand Park is a $45 million-plus economic-development play for Westfield, which hopes to draw businesses seeking exposure to the million-plus visitors expected each year. About 800,000 have visited the park since its soft opening in March.

Mayor Andy Cook said the planned private development is evidence that the strategy is working so far.

“It’s an ideal public-private partnership,” he said. “It works well.”

Although its baseball/softball diamonds and multi-use fields proven popular during the inaugural season, indoor facilities are key to the park’s long-term success.

“In order to really be successful, it needs winter programming, too,” said Karen Radcliff, deputy director of Hamilton County Tourism Inc.

Observers also noticed the decidedly “un-Hoosier” absence of basketball at Grand Park, the mayor said, but he assured them “the nice folks in the private sector would help us fill that void.”

Initial plans for Grand Park also called for a privately owned indoor baseball facility, which has not yet been announced.

Card, who also runs family-owned trucking firm Perkins Global Logistics, said he has been working on plans for the Fieldhouse for about a year.

Across 186th Street, Indiana Department of Transportation crews are digging the 14-acre lake planned as the centerpiece of Grand Park Village, a mixed-use project expected to draw retail and hospitality users.

Developer Steve Henke said he hopes to have news about commercial development on the site in the next 60 to 90 days.

The brutal winter delayed construction of the first retail buildings in the village, announced last November, but Greenwalt Corp. just won city approval of its development and site plans.