Amended development agreement for Scheels Sports Complex will go before city council

An amended and restated development agreement providing more specific plans for the size, scope and design of the 95-acre Scheels Sports Complex at Legacy Pointe will land before the Springfield City Council next week.

The complex just off MacArthur Boulevard near Interstate 72 will include a 150,000-square-foot air structure - billed as the biggest sports dome in the world - that will house six full basketball courts and an artificial turf field convertible from a full soccer field to two youth baseball fields.

Local developers Steve Luker and Dirk McCormick now intend to build both indoor and outdoor facilities at one time.

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If the agreement is approved, construction will begin within 90 days with final completion before the end of 2025.

"It's a widely anticipated and welcomed project," said Ward 9 Ald. Jim Donelan at Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting, where council members got a first look at the revision. "It will indeed draw more attention, draw more people and more economic activity, which is what we need here."

Ward 10 Ald. Ralph Hanauer, though, said he has heard from his share of detractors.

"There are a lot of people who aren't sure this is going to go," Hanauer admitted. "It's imperative you guys get on construction. You've hit all the taxing bodies and that's great, but this thing needs to start rolling."

The amendment comes with an ask of the city, which first committed to the project in May 2021.

The development assistance cap goes from $36.26 million to $45 million, absent interest and financing costs, due to the speeding up of the project.

It also asks the city for a "dollar-for dollar" match of the developers' expenditures for ongoing costs, maintenance, replacements and capital improvements of up to $500,000 annually, from $250,000.

The city's half of assisting on the building of the facilities also goes up by $3 million.

The overall building cost of both phases is pegged at around $67 million.

Ryan McCrady, president and chief executive of the Springfield Sangamon Growth Alliance, said the "inflationary environment," which also has ushered in higher interest rates, has made the amended agreement necessary.

"Knowing that they're building the biggest sports dome in the world, that they're doing both phases in one, if you look at the increase they're asking for and you know what inflation is, a lot of people have told me (the asked for amount) is less than what they expected under that environment," McCrady said.

The city's assistance is coming through a hotel-motel tax incentive, with a quarter of the now 8% citywide hotel-motel tax being allocated for the sports complex. There are sales tax and property tax rebates also helping out.

The complex is expected to host 60- to 100-team tournaments on weekends, generating some 250,000 new visitors along with about $30 million in new spending annually, local tourism officials have indicated.

Mayor Jim Langfelder said throughout his reelection campaign that the sports complex was going to get done. Langfelder, who lost to Misty Buscher in the April 4 race, pounded home the point again after Tuesday's meeting.

"We've been at it for a number of years," he said. "We got a little disrupted by the (COVID-19) pandemic. It's going to happen. It makes sense."

"We're trying to get to the beginning of (the starting line), frankly," McCrady said, with a laugh. "The feedback I got from the council tonight was really good. They had a lot of great questions. It shows how far they dig into these things, and I believe there are going to be more questions between now and next Tuesday.

"I think it's fair to say they were generally positive about it, and they want to see the project go forward and I think most of the people in the community feel that way."

Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788, sspearie@sj-r.com, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: The Springfield City Council will take a new look at the Scheels Sports Complex