Grand Park Sports Campus realizing financial potential as new district awaits

Grand Park Sports Campus in Westfield is finally seeing the financial results city officials anticipated more than a decade ago.

The 400-acre sports complex, which is set to undergo a 10-year transformation with the construction of a new sports, entertainment and business district near the park, now generates enough tax-increment-financing revenue to fully cover its debt payments, while its revenue reached an all-time high last year.

And while other cities have attempted to copy Westfield’s approach with Grand Park, none has managed to match the campus’s stature in the youth travel sports world. Some complexes around the country have struggled to even get off the ground.

There was plenty of skepticism about Grand Park before and after the youth sports mecca opened for business in 2014. The campus was billed as a way for Westfield to build a commercial property tax base that would relieve pressure from its largely residential taxpayers.

Mayor Scott Willis said Grand Park was never meant to be a profit-generating business. Rather, he said, it was meant to be an economic engine that would attract other types of industry around the park.

“I think most residents are at a point now where we’re proud, we’re excited. We’re glad we built Grand Park,” Mayor Scott Willis said. “The financials have certainly played out in a way that [former Mayor Andy Cook] said they would. Took a while. Took a little longer.”

Developers have built projects around Grand Park, including the Wyndham Westfield hotel, Charlestown on the Monon Apartments, the Ascension St. Vincent YMCA, the Grand Park Shoppes and the Wellbrooke of Westfield senior living facility.

But while Willis said Westfield has done “an above-average job” of building Grand Park and getting results out of it, he added that the city needs to do a better job of luring businesses around it.

“And that’s what we’re going to focus on,” he said.

Grand Park has 31 soccer fields, 26 baseball diamonds, two administration buildings, seven concession stands and the 378,000-square-foot multi-use Grand Park Events Center. The Indianapolis Colts moved their annual summer training camp to the park in 2018.

Original predictions said Grand Park would draw 250,000 people a year. In 2023, Grand Park drew 1.3 million visitors and 5.5 million individual visits, which made it the 16th-most visited arena, convention center or sports complex in the country, according to statistics provided by the city.

Grand Park started with an $85 million public investment. As of last year, Westfield had $62 million in remaining debt tied to the property; it is scheduled to be paid off in 2041.

City officials said the TIF district that encompasses Grand Park—the 2,200-acre Grand Junction Economic Development Area—began generating enough revenue in 2023 to cover the campus’s debt payments. Previously, debt payments were made with funds from the TIF district, local income tax revenue and surpluses.

Revenue the TIF district generated increased from $2.76 million in 2023 to $2.95 million last year. The city expects the TIF district will generate $3.74 million this year with continued annual growth for the rest of the decade.

And Grand Park generated a profit each year from 2016 to 2022. The largest came in 2021, when the park made $2.7 million more in revenue than expenses.

The last two years were its highest revenue-generating: nearly $6.7 million in 2023 and $7.4 million last year. But the park ran deficits those years ($12,412 in 2023 and $405,558 in 2024), primarily because of capital improvements, including outdoor turf replacement.

“Our goal is to continue to be the trendsetter,” Grand Park Director Matt Trnian said. “When you have all these new facilities popping up, [you] want to be the leader.”

New arrangement

For the first time since Grand Park opened, it has a private operator.

In December, members of the Westfield City Council unanimously approved a 30-year, $184 million public-private partnership with Grand Park Sports & Entertainment to operate the campus. GPSE is a joint venture between Indianapolis-based Indy Sports and Entertainment LLC (the Indy Eleven professional soccer club) and Westfield-based Bullpen Ventures LLC.

Indianapolis-based commercial development company Keystone Group LLC is a private developer working with the city on Grand Park District. Keystone and Indy Eleven are both owned by Ersal Ozdemir. Bullpen Ventures operates Bullpen Tournaments, which organizes baseball and softball tournaments at Grand Park.

Westfield retained ownership of Grand Park under the agreement that went into effect Jan. 1. The city and Grand Park Sports & Entertainment will manage and develop the sports campus for 30 years, which includes an initial 10-year term and four five-year extensions. Grand Park’s staff, which ranges from 18 to 25 employees depending on the season, are now employees of GPSE.

Under terms of the deal, GPSE will pay the city $184 million over the 30-year term with a 4% escalator each year. In turn, the group will reap revenue from operating and developing the campus. GPSE will begin making monthly payments to the city on May 30.

“We’re not limited in how we spend that money,” Willis said. “But I’ve made the commitment while I’m mayor of Westfield that it will be reinvested back in the park. That would be investments in the Grand Park District.”

Westfield and GPSE will each make annual contributions into a shared escrow account that can be used for capital improvements and other projects at Grand Park. The city contributed $2 million to the escrow fund on Dec. 31, and it will provide $1 million on Dec. 31, 2025, and make annual 2% increases in subsequent years. Through the end of the contract, Westfield will contribute $40.7 million, and GPSE will provide $38.8 million to the escrow account. The city’s payments will come from its Grand Park fund.

Capturing more tax?

Willis said Westfield is lobbying the Legislature to amend rules for professional sports and convention development areas so one can be created near Grand Park. The city wants to capitalize on its planned Grand Park District, which is expected to bring billions of dollars in investment to the southern end of the park toward 186th Street.

A PSDA (an acronym for professional sports development area, its former name) captures state sales and income tax revenue generated by sports facilities, hotels and other commercial properties within a 1-mile radius of a new development in the district that serves one or more professional sports teams.

Westfield’s PSDA is expected to generate $92 million in tax revenue over the next 32 years.

“We’re working with the legislators to see if we can carve out a change to what they currently have with that,” Willis said. “It could shed off as much as $2 million of increment for the city, and that would be used to pay that escrow payment.”

Westfield initially considered selling Grand Park, but city officials decided in 2023 to retain the park and seek an operator. Willis said as a private operator, GPSE provides stability for the campus while removing risk from the city. Plus, GPSE’s offer was the only one that included an investment in the infrastructure and fields at the park.

“The risk of running the business now falls into the private sector,” he said. “We have a lease payment, and they’re going to make that payment every year regardless [of] how well the park does. So that is certainly a benefit for us.”

He also said the deal means increased revenue for the city. This year, he said, Westfield will get about 2-1/2 times more revenue than was generated in 2023.

“This is going to be a huge windfall for the city,” he said.

The only negative to the deal in Willis’ mind, he said, is the length of the contract.

“I’ll be 85 when this contract expires, and so that made me a little nervous that we would enter that long of an agreement. But when you think about it again, they’re investing into the park,” he said. “You’re not going to do that if you have a short-term contract. That was kind of a balancing act. If you want this, you’re going to have to give in another area.”

The deal as originally proposed called for a 40-year commitment but was negotiated down to 30 years.

Building a district

Big changes are coming to the area around Grand Park Sports Campus.

The city last month unveiled a master plan for Grand Park District, which could feature a 10,000-seat stadium, a sports technology incubator space and a park lined with attractions, housing, office facilities, restaurants and hotels.

Grand Park District would cover about 152 acres north and south of 186th Street and bisected by Grand Park Boulevard. The district, which Willis predicted would take a decade to develop, would have three destination areas: the existing Grand Park Events Center at the north, the proposed stadium that would become home of the Indy Eleven women’s soccer team in the middle and either an ice rink facility or a sports-related headquarters building at the south.

Indy Eleven plans to construct a club headquarters at Grand Park District. IBJ reported last week that Westfield is one of three finalists for USA Gymnastics’ planned training facility and headquarters relocation, and the city has pitched Grand Park as the destination. Noblesville and the Dallas suburb of Frisco, Texas, are the other two cities.

In total, Grand Park District would have 8 million square feet of development and 4,000 residential units, plus more than 7,000 parking spaces across multiple garages, two surface lots and on-street parking. A trolley system would connect Grand Park to downtown Westfield and the city’s hotels.

Willis said Westfield is preparing to start “a full-court press” to encourage companies to move to Grand Park.

“We already started shouting from the mountaintops what Grand Park is and what it’s doing and the amount of tourists it’s bringing into this campus,” he said. “The more we do that, I think the more opportunities we’re going to have because why wouldn’t you want to be near it?”

Construction is expected to get underway this year on a parking garage to replace surface parking in front of Grand Park Events Center.

“My hope and my vision is that this is a 10-year project. That seems aggressive for a several-billion-dollar development, but I think we can get it done,” Willis said. “I don’t want this to drag out for 20 to 30 years. So, my vision is, this will happen swiftly.”

Keystone will be the developer north of 186th Street, while Indianapolis-based Card & Associates Athletic Facilities has a contract to purchase the land in Grand Park District south of 186th Street. The city and Card & Associates will work to rezone that property to facilitate development of the south area of the Grand Park District master plan.

Card & Associates CEO Andy Card said the new hotels and restaurants at Grand Park District will support growth at Grand Park and throughout Westfield.

Card started the Pacers Athletic Center, which is adjacent to Grand Park, and he has opened youth sports facilities in Lebanon, Noblesville, Pendleton and Mishawaka.

“This whole Grand Park village is going to set the park apart,” he said. “It’s a huge opportunity from multiple avenues all feeding into one big opportunity. It’s significant.”

Keystone Group Chief of Staff Jennifer Pavlik said Grand Park District “presents a transformational opportunity” for Westfield and central Indiana.

“Transforming this district into a complete live, work, play and stay destination will catapult Westfield into an internationally recognized world-class destination,” she said.

‘365 days a year’

Grand Park District represents a trend across the United States of mixed-use developments built around sports facilities to attract people when games are not being played.

In suburban Atlanta, The Battery Atlanta was built adjacent to Truist Park, home of MLB’s Atlanta Braves. And The Star District in Frisco, Texas, has grown around the headquarters of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

“Sports entertainment districts like The Battery are successful because they are active 365 days a year,” Pavlik said. “Residents live and work within the walkable district, and they relax at the district’s amenities like restaurants, retail, and indoor and outdoor entertainment facilities. Everything someone could ever need is available within the district.”

The 2.25-million-square-foot Battery Atlanta features the global headquarters of Papa John’s Pizza, Omni- and Aloft-branded hotels, apartments, office buildings, shops, bars and restaurants. Along with Cowboys headquarters, The Star District has a 12,000-seat multiuse stadium, an Omni hotel, restaurants and shops.

Indiana University Bloomington professor Cassandra Coble, who studies youth sports management and youth sports travel, said building a district at Grand Park will give families and athletes a reason to stay in Westfield for the duration of their trip. She said Grand Park District will also benefit the wider Westfield community by providing more resources for residents.

“I think that they’ve been doing a really good job in terms of trying to recognize that they have to keep innovating in order to do this,” Coble said. “And I would have argued 10 years ago that they needed to make sure that they had more entertainment, more hotels, more restaurants, because, again, families are coming, and they’re coming to play the sport.”

Designs for Grand Park District are being drawn at a time when an increasing number of youth sports facilities are opening around the country as cities look to get their share of the $19 billion youth sports industry. The Washington, D.C.-based Aspen Institute estimated that families spend $30 billion to $40 billion a year on their children’s youth sports activities.

Card & Associates last year opened the $31 million Farmers Bank Fieldhouse near Interstate 65 and State Road 39 in Lebanon at Hickory Junction, a 95-acre development with housing, restaurants, shops and hotels. Elsewhere in the Midwest, campuses like Cedar Point Sports Center in Sandusky, Ohio, and Elizabethtown Sports Park in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, have opened in the past decade.

Some youth sports complexes that have opened in the past few years have struggled. In Mesa, Arizona, the 320-acre, $280 million Bell Bank Park opened in 2022. The next year, the park’s owners—a nonprofit called Legacy Cares—filed for bankruptcy, and the park was sold for $25.5 million to Florida-based Burke Operating Partners, according to reporting by the Arizona Republic. The park is now known as Arizona Athletic Grounds.

“The barrier of entry now to do what we’ve done in Grand Park is a tall order, especially in the last five to six years,” Card said. “With interest rates and inflation, it’d be really tough to pull off.”

Willis said he keeps an eye on what other communities are building, but he does not think Grand Park can be easily copied.

“Think of it like Disney,” he said. “Yeah, you’ve got a Kings Island and Six Flags, but still, Disney is the gorilla in the room, and King’s Island is never going to overtake Disneyland. I look at it the same way. What we have created at Grand Park, I’m not sure another city could ever replicate that.”•