‘A destination place.’ Lexington Sporting Club locks in plan for permanent soccer stadium.

Lexington Sporting Club has announced plans for a stadium to call its own.

On Tuesday afternoon, LSC — Central Kentucky’s newest professional sports franchise — announced it will build a permanent, soccer-specific stadium off Athens Boonesboro Road, near Interstate 75 in Lexington.

This is adjacent to Lexington Sporting Club’s existing youth sports fields at the same location.

The formal announcement of LSC’s plans for a permanent stadium came Tuesday at the new stadium site, with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton joining LSC front office members and representatives at a planned event.

LSC — which has one match left in its debut season in USL League One, the third tier of American men’s pro soccer — spent its first season playing USL League One and USL W-League matches at Toyota Stadium in Georgetown, a 5,000-seat stadium that also hosts the football, lacrosse and soccer teams for Georgetown College, an NAIA school located about 13 miles north of Lexington.

According to the club, the new stadium off Athens Boonesboro Road is expected to be completed in time for LSC’s first season in the USL Super League, a new professional women’s soccer league that intends to compete within the first division of American women’s pro soccer and will start play in August 2024.

The new stadium will be home to both USL League One and USL Super League matches. Team officials anticipate the complex will lead to additional business development along the Athens Boonesboro corrider.

Beshear said at Tuesday’s announcement that the stadium and new development will create jobs and bring in tourism dollars to Fayette County.

“It’ll be a source of game-changing growth,” the governor said. “It’ll drive major dollars into this community with over $92.4 million estimated to be generated over the next decade.”

The Herald-Leader conducted phone interviews with several Lexington Sporting Club officials, including majority owner Bill Shively, to learn more about the planned stadium and the process of selecting the stadium location.

“I always leaned toward connecting everything together, and I think ultimately with the practice facility and the kids’ training area going in down there, that was kind of the weight that won the battle,” Shively said.

A common theme reiterated by LSC leadership was the efficiency of having one location connecting the youth and professional aspects of the franchise.

“Being able to put it together made a lot of sense,” Shively said.

“There’s other places in the country that, they have their stadium in one location, their training facilities in another, and it all works,” added Stephen Dawahare, another member of LSC ownership. “But it’s very unique, it’s very hard, to get this much land collectively together to do all those things in one centralized place, which is fantastic.”

Gorton said the city worked hard to keep the stadium in Fayette County. Soccer has become a dominant sport in Kentucky’s second-largest city. Many local kids, including her own children and Beshear, have played soccer and are fans.

But it’s also become more popular as Lexington’s demographic has changed, the mayor said.

“Our diverse city is one in which there are well over 150 different languages spoken. That tells you so much about why soccer is incredibly popular here,” Gorton said. “As mayor, I look at this announcement through an economic development lens. This is the type of quality of life addition that will help us attract and grow new jobs as well as create jobs of its own.”

New LSC stadium to feature at least 5,000 seats

Shively said the stadium will be built in a “modular” fashion, and it will initially feature more than 5,000 seats with the ability to expand to 11,000.

Shively said a ballpark figure for stadium investment is $30 million.

According to the LSC news release announcing the new stadium, the existing seven training fields and the stadium at the Athens Boonesboro location represent a combined investment of nearly $82 million.

The release also said the stadium’s name will be announced at a later date.

Vince Gabbert, the president of LSC, told the Herald-Leader the plan is to begin work on the stadium bowl, field and seating within the next 60 days.

Gabbert said LSC is still working with the city of Lexington to finalize incentives for potential funds provided to help build the stadium.

The city provided LSC with $1 million in incentives to pay for up to seven youth sports fields adjacent to the new stadium site. As part of the deal, Lexington Sporting Club must have five full-time people employed at the site, which is currently under construction. The average salary for those people will be $35,000 per year for 10 years. The $1 million agreement, which was funded by the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council, does not guarantee there will be public access to the private youth sports fields.

Susan Straub, a spokeswoman for the city, said the city has not finalized additional incentives for the stadium.

“We are working on a package of incentives with the Lexington Sporting Club and with council,” Straub said. “Details have not been finalized. It is similar to packages we have put in place with other new businesses moving into our city.”

The goal is to have the playing surface in place by the spring and have the stadium ready in August to host women’s USL Super League matches.

This means the LSC senior men’s team would begin its second season in USL League One at Toyota Stadium in Georgetown, before shifting to the new stadium during the season.

“I know that this kind of (modular) system can be put together rather quickly,” Shively said. “... This will be something that over the next five years, you’ll see year by year some improvement, some future development in the stadium itself.”

“There’s an experience that you can only have with your stadium,” added Dawahare, who has a daughter, Brooke, who was a soccer standout at Lafayette High School and has committed to play at Princeton.

LSC intends to build permanent structures that would replace the modular components of the stadium.

An example of this is the stadium’s South End Zone: The current plan is for that to be a fan area, but a permanent structure is planned that would house LSC offices and a training center.

Additionally, the hope is to have other entertainment options, such as hotels and restaurants, built near the soccer complex, which will host tournaments and other events.

“We want this to be a destination place,” Gabbert said. “Both from a stadium standpoint, but also when people come for tournaments we want them to be able to have as much turnkey and as much all-in-one solutions as possible.”

Dawahare also explained the stadium’s location is a bet on expected population growth in South Lexington.

“We’ve had a long-term vision for looking, paying attention to where the city might expand,” Dawahare said. “We started paying attention to this five, six years ago. We started buying some properties up around this area.”

“Now it looks like the expansion of the city is going to go all the way through to Athens Boonesboro, out to where we’re at. It’s really going to be part of the city, it’s not going to be disconnected there.”

The Urban County Planning Commission is expected to vote Oct. 19 on whether to approve a committee’s recommendation to expand the city’s growth boundary by nearly 3,000 acres. Part of the area that may be included as part of the city’s first expansion area since 1996 includes areas near the proposed soccer stadium and youth sports fields off of Athens Boonesboro Road.

Stadium selection process for LSC reaches an end

The announcement of LSC’s stadium plans comes after several other potential sites were discussed, but ultimately not selected.

Among the locations previously floated as potential sites for a soccer stadium in Central Kentucky were the High Street parking lot of Central Bank Center across from Rupp Arena, near Newtown Pike, and at Brannon Crossing near the Fayette County-Jessamine County line.

“It’s difficult to find large pieces of land that are viable and connected well to the city,” said Shively, who noted that the Newtown Pike location was a preferred location for the stadium.

“We had, really in economic terms, better deals to go in other places,” Gabbert added. “But nothing (that) really afforded us the opportunity to have everything all at one spot.”

Steps were taken earlier this year to ensure that building the stadium near Interstate 75 — which offers access for out-of-town visitors — was a viable option.

In late April, the Lexington council voted to approve a zone change on Athens Boonesboro Road for a proposed new soccer stadium.

The Lexington-Fayette Urban County Council voted 10-2 to approve a zone change from a B-5 business to a B-3 business zone at 5380 and 5354 Athens Boonesboro Road, as well as a conditional use permit that would allow for a sports stadium, training center, medical building and restaurants on approximately 30 acres at that location.

That vote came following a nearly five-hour public hearing.

“We’ve worked really closely with planning and zoning, and we engaged some of the neighborhoods on the very front end,” Gabbert said when asked by the Herald-Leader about concerns expressed by nearby residents about the stadium being built at this location.

“Most of the developments, the commercial pieces, that are in that corridor are extremely excited about what this means for that corridor. That’s been a somewhat ignored interchange for the city for a number of years, and we feel like that as we create a demand generator in that corridor that opens up to the city, that it will improve the look and the feel.”

Gabbert had previously said Lexington Sporting Club’s franchise agreement with USL called for a stadium to be built by 2024, but LSC could have gotten a waiver from the league if a stadium wasn’t built.

Lexington Sporting Club almost finished with season

Lexington Sporting Club is just days away from finishing its first seasons.

Over the summer, LSC fielded a team in the USL W-League, a pre-professional women’s soccer league.

On Saturday, the Lexington Sporting Club men’s senior team played its final home game as part of the USL League One season.

Lexington Sporting Club is 7-14-10 (W-L-D) in its debut professional season in USL League One, with a 6-4-6 mark in home matches at Toyota Stadium and a 1-10-4 mark on the road.

Last month LSC made a head coaching change with Sam Stockley — who also serves as the club’s men’s sporting director — leaving that post and Nacho Novo, previously an assistant coach under Stockley, taking over as interim head coach.

“We’re going to have to get better,” Shively said. “This was our inaugural season, we learned a lot and this thing is a process, it’s going to take us awhile, but I really will continue to try to push the envelope and make sure that the club improves year after year.”

LSC sits 10th in the 12-team USL League One standings, and was eliminated from playoff contention Sept. 23.

In its 16 home matches at Toyota Stadium this season, Lexington Sporting Club drew a total reported attendance of 35,717 fans. That equates to an average of 2,232 fans per match.

Fans may visit the Lexington Sporting Club website now to make deposits toward season tickets for all of the club’s teams next year.

A season-high, single-game attendance of 3,029 people came to LSC’s first home match April 8.

“I think over the years, we want to be like Wrexham,” Shively said, referencing the fourth-division professional team from Wales that has developed worldwide interest since being bought by actors Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds.

“Where everybody in town likes to come to our soccer games.”

Herald-Leader Staff Writer Beth Musgrave contributed to this article.

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