$9 million soccer facility finally under way in Draper
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An artist's elevation depicts the Soccer City building, which should be ready for players in September.
slideshow By Brice Wallace
The Enterprise
An indoor soccer project that’s been kicked around for a few years is becoming reality, with developers hoping to score in a community steeped with strong interest in the sport.
Construction on the $9 million Soccer City, 757 W. 11400 S., Draper, began in mid-March and the four-field facility is set to open Sept. 1.
“We’re just getting ready to start concrete work on the building,” Soccer City owner Rick Olsen said. “We’re done with excavation. The walls will be standing in about two months, then we’ll put the steel inside. From here on out, it will move rather quickly.”
Olsen Associates & Construction, the contractor/owner, announced the project in late 2009, but a variety of obstacles delayed construction.
“It was several things,” Olsen said. “It took longer than we thought to get some of the zoning and some of the approvals we needed to get. We actually tried to move the location of the building down to a different area on the same site, which was not successful. And we were working with UDOT [Utah Department of Transportation] and having to get a permit for an access road off of 114th South. Every government entity you have to work with, we had to work with and they don’t exactly move at a rapid pace.”
When Soccer City’s doors open, visitors will find two large fields and two fields for Futsal, which is a five-per-side version of the game.
“We’ve got four fields all under one roof. We’ve done something that’s never really been done in Utah and it’s not been done a whole lot even outside of the state, that we’re aware of. People tend to focus on one or the other [types of fields] and don’t have the whole package. We’re going to be able to offer both. There’s only one other one in Utah that houses more than one field and it’s only got two. We really kind of broke the mold when we sat down and decided to do something really first-class.”
The 78,000 square foot building sits on 6.4 acres that previously was a home and farm. In addition to the fields, Soccer City will feature a lounge, room for a pro shop, a concession area and a 1,300 square foot multipurpose room that can be used for birthday parties, classes and other events. Soccer City will have only a few employees, although game referees are subcontractors.
Olsen expects Soccer City to be a hit for players from age six on up. He believes several thousand people will come in. Some will be casual players, but he knows some diehards who play on four different teams and thus play four nights a week.
“For the most part, it’s been hard to make one of these things pencil out at the end, mainly for the price of land. But we’ve owned this land for seven years now and we’re also a builder, so we were able to build it for more of a wholesale price than a retail having someone else come in and build it. It’s kind of one of those things where all the pieces of the puzzle had to fall into place, and they did for us,” Olsen said.
“The need is tremendous. Soccer is big. I don’t know if it will ever be as big as it is overseas or in South or Central America and such, but there’s definitely a huge market out there and it’s just getting bigger. Real Salt Lake helped spur that but it was already here and coming.”
Ultimately, Soccer City could expand to other cities. But until then, Olsen expects Draper to embrace its facility.
“This is a community asset. It fits more in a community setting. It’s there for the community. It will be a place where people will want to come and hang out. At some existing facilities, you kind of show up five minutes before your game, you play and then you hurry to get back out of there. There’s not a lot of roaming room or social aspect to it.”
ASWN is the project architect. Site and floor plans can be viewed at
www.soccercityutah.com.
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