UPDATED: Amateur sports complex on hold; developer misses rezoning deadline

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CHARLOTTE – A public-private venture to develop a $76.7 million amateur sports complex on land around Bojangles Coliseum is on hold while negotiations continue, a spokeswoman for the nonprofit Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority said this week.

In June, GoodSports Enterprises of Sarasota, Fla., had indicated it would file by July 28 a city rezoning petition that must be approved before the project can move forward.

“There’s no mystery; we’re essentially still in negotiations and we can’t rezone until we finish negotiations,” said Laura Hill, media relations manager for the Visitors Authority, which manages Bojangles Coliseum and Ovens Auditorium, Charlotte icons at 2700 E. Independence Blvd. “There’s been some discussion about how to structure the parking garage and some of the surface parking.”

Meanwhile, another GoodSports project, in the Dayton suburb of Huber Heights, Ohio, is also on hold while the developer tweaks the project’s financing, said Scott Falkowski, assistant city manager for Huber Heights.

Falkowski said he believes that GoodSports will follow through and that the $22 million project will be finished on time, in September 2015.

Anthony Homer, GoodSports vice president for development, did not returned phone calls seeking comment about the projects.

After missing June’s deadline for filing a city of Charlotte rezoning petition, GoodSports officials told city officials they would submit one by 5 p.m. Monday, the deadline for the next rezoning cycle, Brad Richardson, the city’s economic development manager, said at the time.

But GoodSports did not do so, Richard Hobbs of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department said this week.

Brad Richardson, who has since left his job with the city, said in June that the city’s negotiations with GoodSports were running on two separate tracks: submitting a rezoning petition with the Planning Department; and a making a business arrangement with Neighborhood & Business Services. Both would eventually need Charlotte City Council approval.

“We are still working on some of the business terms, so we delayed the rezoning so that it wouldn’t run too far ahead,” Brad Richardson said in June. “This also gives us some additional time to finalize some site-design issues.”

Among other things, the City Council would have to approve committing $25 million to the project. That $25 million was part of the city’s $816 million capital improvement plan enacted in 2013, and was set aside for projects to revitalize the Bojangles-Ovens area. But the council must decide if it wants to spend the full sum on the GoodSports proposal.

In addition to the city’s pending $25 million contribution, the developer would contribute $39.7 million; the remaining $12 million would come from the city’s hospitality tax.

The previously announced target date for the completion of the coliseum-area sports complex is January 2016.

The Charlotte GoodSports project would include a 100,000-square-foot field house, a 150-room hotel, up to 1,800 parking spaces between a structured parking deck and a surface lot, 5,300 square feet of retail, 7,000 square feet of office space, and renovations to the coliseum.

The plan is a scaled-back version of a plan unveiled at an April meeting of the Economic Development Committee, when GoodSports proposed a $97 million development, which had 600 more parking spaces and about 5,000 more square feet of retail space.

In Ohio, GoodSports has an agreement with the city of Huber Heights to develop a field house and hotel beside the city’s $18 million Music Center.

The Dayton Daily News last week reported that the city of Huber Heights has not transferred 6 acres to GoodSports because of the financing renegotiations.

In an interview with The Mecklenburg Times this week, Falkowski said that the financing has been in place since January but is now being tweaked; that GoodSports has submitted building permits and drawings; and that the site plan has been approved by the city. The developer has met all the city’s requirements, he said, except the “open by” date, which the Huber Heights City Council last month extended; it was originally June 2015.

“We’re confident that they’re still coming,” Falkowski said.

“It’s a new venture for them; ours will be the first one with the field house and hotel. There are going to be hiccups. They’re trying to create a brand. And they want to succeed, and we want them to succeed.”

There has been no activity on the site of the Huber Heights project since April, when a construction trailer and fencing were installed, The Dayton Daily News report said. Construction crews last fall extended utility lines to the site and installed a building pad at a cost of about $300,000, the report said.

GoodSports has also announced projects in Wichita, Kan., and in suburban towns outside St. Louis and Indianapolis. Officials in those municipalities could not be reached in time for this story.

The Mecklenburg Times Editor Sharon Roberts contributed to this report