Amateur sports facilities bring families and visitors that spend more time and get exposed to the culture of a region, meetNKY President and CEO Julie Kirkpatrick said—and that’s why the tourism bureau hired a consulting group to explore what that could look like in Northern Kentucky.
NKY has the advantage of favorable geographic positioning, Kirkpatrick said, with 1.9 to 2.5 million people residing within a 60-minute drive. Through an eight-month-long process with CSL Consultants, Kirkpatrick said their findings show a market opportunity for an amateur sports complex to succeed in NKY. Kirkpatrick shared the results during a Campbell County Mayor’s meeting on Jan. 23. No action was taken at the meeting, since it was simply a feasibility study.
“I bring to you these reports that were generated unbiased, and our board and our executive committee are currently looking for the way forward on these obviously in partnership with the county and partnership with the state of Kentucky,” Kirkpatrick said.
Market research showed that an outdoor rectangular field sports complex would be suitable to attract soccer, lacrosse, flag football and football, which the region has enough demand for that existing facilities cannot accommodate. The concept designed after the research is a multi-sport rectangular field with 12 full-size synthetic turf fields, including one championship field with 1,500 seats.
“This absolutely would be a quality-of-life enhancer for people that live in Northern Kentucky, besides being an attractor to bring in more visitors,” Kirkpatrick said.
The design, she said, would require heavy land usage, with at least 70 acres to accommodate parking for 1,100 people. Kirkpatrick said the challenge of the project would be NKY’s terrain and balancing economic development with quality-of-life improvement projects.
CSL Consultants also found that the existing inventory of outdoor youth sports facilities in NKY, primarily rectangle and diamond fields, was limited.
There was a secondary demand for an indoor facility for volleyball, basketball, cheer, taekwondo, etc.; however, CSL found that the proximity of Spooky Nook, an indoor sports complex in Hamilton, Ohio, would limit the region’s ability to be successful.
“What I’m seeing is they (Hamilton) really are developing around that (Spooky Nook) now,” Kirkpatrick said. “That is the future of that city.”
A second concept was drawn for an indoor facility with eight full-size basketball courts, 16 full-size volleyball courts, 950 parking spaces, and other amenities that come with an indoor sports complex. This concept would require 10 acres, with a minimum ceiling height of 35 feet.
Aside from the millions of people within an hour’s drive, there are 13-15 million people within a 3-hour drive from NKY that the consultants found favorable for a sports facility.
Kirkpatrick said NKY already has the infrastructure to support visitors, with roughly 7,500 hotel rooms available on any night.
As part of the study, CSL showed the impact the two facilities would have in a four-year cycle. Year one is the opening, years two and three are for growth, and it would stabilize in year four.
For the multi-sport rectangle field complex, CSL estimates that by year four, it would bring in about 1,100 local usages and roughly 6,400 inbound or tournament usages annually. CSL also found a higher economic impact from the outdoor facility—generating approximately $26.5 million in year four—due to the non-competing nature.
It would be a $40 million investment generating 20,000 hotel room nights a year and 400,000 attendees—which Kirkpatrick said is a one-to-one visitor-to-resident ratio.
The indoor sports facility has an estimated 3,700 local users and about 4,000 inbound visitors, with a $22.9 million economic impact in year four. It is an estimated $52 million building.
After hearing the findings, Kirkpatrick said the overall opinion was that the outdoor field was a much stronger concept.
“At the end of the day, it is about bringing more people here and getting them to stay here,” Kirkpatrick said. “The more cheese we put in the mousetrap, the better we will eventually grow our population.”
