United owner has vision for the team that includes elusive stadium

Jun. 12—The best night's sleep Peter Trevisani had in the months leading into Election Day in November was the one in which the votes were counted.

"At that point, the work had been done and there was nothing much we could do," he said. "Slept like a baby that night."

The owner and president of New Mexico United, Trevisani promoted a $50 million bond package that would have helped fund a proposed stadium project for the professional soccer club. The cost was projected to be as high as $70 million, with the club committed to kick in an additional $32 million to complete its construction.

Albuquerque voters rejected the bond by nearly a 2-to-1 margin, sending a clear message that as popular as United soccer has become, it's not the will of the people to dump millions in public funds to build it a permanent home.

Trevisani remains upbeat and undeterred, which is par for the course for a man who, against the odds, has introduced professional soccer to New Mexico and made it a celebrated part of our culture. The club has been an attendance leader in the United Soccer League's Championship level since its inception, despite playing the vast majority of its home games in a stadium built for baseball — and dealing with a pandemic that forced it to play all of its 2020 games on the road.

In Santa Fe earlier this week to watch his developmental U-23 team play against Salt City SC on Thursday night at Capital, Trevisani said he's pushing ahead with stadium plans using the same kind of drive and optimism that he's always had.

"We can't be afraid of hard work, we can't be afraid of challenges," he said. "We've got to go tackle them and just figure out ways to go get them done."

The fact that there's even a U-23 team in United's system speaks to the work being done behind the scenes. It's one of three levels to United soccer, following in the wake of the big club in the USL Championship and one step above the Academy club that's made up of local high school players. There's even talk of launching a women's team in the next year or two.

The U-23 is technically a semi-pro team made up mostly of college-aged players. It plays in the USL2 and roster restrictions allow for five players older than 23 to be on the club. United's roster has just three, none of them older than 25.

One is goalkeeper Anthony Muñoz, a former star in high school at La Cueva and a member of the University of New Mexico when the school eliminated the sport in 2019. A senior this past season at Grand Canyon, he is one of about 30 players on the U-23 roster hoping to use his time with the club to land a full-time professional gig.

"That's the goal, that's the dream," Muñoz said after Thursday's match. "I think that's what we're all hoping for."

With so many players in its system, with so many teams in its extended family, the writing's on the wall for Trevisani and the future of United soccer. The team's training center at Mesa del Sol has enough space to get practices in, but it's clear that the strain on landing a full-time, permanent home is growing.

In Trevisani's words, the team's just getting started.

"If I say that a lot, it's because we are," he said. "We've always talked about New Mexico United being much more than just soccer. It's about being an agent of positive change, of giving us things that we're proud of and allowing us to export New Mexico across the country and to the rest of the world by showing everybody what we're capable of here."

To that end, Trevisani is fully committed to growing his franchise in a way that makes it more than just a successful sports venture. To him, it's bigger than sports.

As optimistic as he was he'd get the bond measure passed, he went into the November election cycle knowing there was always the possibility of implementing a Plan B.

"The vote was no; we heard what the people said," Trevisani said. "I think we personally learned a lot. I would think the city of Albuquerque learned a lot, but if we stopped every time we heard 'no,' nothing would ever get accomplished. Our goal is to build a stadium, to do it privately and we're excited to do that."

That one word — privately — is what likely gets most people's attention. It means the club is exploring ways to finance the stadium on its own rather than using public funds.

It also means the actual site of the facility is a huge question mark. The measure failed, in no small part, because of a grassroots push by historic neighborhoods in downtown Albuquerque to demand a lot more infrastructure and a lot less soccer.

The club has gotten the message, and it's full steam ahead toward the light at the end of the tunnel. It may take years to get there, but the team is definitely driving in that direction.

"We're working hard every day to put the pieces in place and our hope is that in a few years from now we're playing in our own facility, in something that has never been seen before anywhere in this world," Trevisani said. "Something that's going to represent us in a really amazing way."

Trevesani said the team didn't exactly toss out the playbook for the stadium plans. Rather, it's merely a time to push the pause button and change tactics.

"It's not like we had to start over at all," he said. "We had to start over in terms of creativity and how we're going to put this together now that we know it won't be a city facility, that it will be a private facility. The facility itself was always supposed to be more than a soccer stadium."

He has said from the start of this process that the facility would be open nearly every day, be it for non-United events like youth soccer or concerts to exhibits that are outside the sports realm. It's one reason why the word "facility" is used more often than "stadium."

Trevisani's vision is that it become a truly New Mexico thing, even down to the concessions.

"The idea is that why are we importing food from other states when we have some of the best ranchers here, some of the best produce," he said. "Let's have as much of the food come from New Mexico as possible. Maybe 100 percent, that's not changing. In fact, it might be even easier to do now that we have more control over it. So blending art, sport, creativity — that's all going to still hold true. Now it's more about the financing than the mission."

Until then, it's business as usual for a soccer club that is working night and day to get the entire state behind it. Whether it's the parent club, the U-23s or the Academy club, the next step is always in the works for an organization that's growing New Mexico soccer of all ages in ways no one could have imagined.