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Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Hoover recreation basketball coach Chris Mitchell works on skills with his third-grade team on Nov. 7 at the Finley Center. The Finley Center plays host to numerous recreational basketball teams.
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Photos by Sarah Finnegan.
Dr. Larry Lemak, a nationally-renowned orthopedist who is chairman of the Alabama Sports Foundation, poses in front of the sports performance area of the Finley Center. The plan is for the foundation to turn the 7,000-square-foot space into a sports performance, training, rehab and education center.
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Photo by Jon Anderson.
The exterior of the Finley Center.
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Photo by Jon Anderson.
Members of the Southern Performance Volleyball Academy participate in an open gym session on Nov. 7. The volleyball program trains approximately 300 girls per year.
Revenues at the Hoover Metropolitan Complex are coming in slightly lower than expected since the Finley Center opened in May.
But officials with the Florida firm hired to manage the complex say the 155,000-square-foot indoor facility still is just getting ramped up and there is strong interest in the outdoor fields under construction. New tenants for the Finley Center and a strong pipeline of events headed to the complex give them confidence in the future, they said.
“We’re very optimistic about where we’re headed,” said Jason Clement, the chief operating officer for Sports Facilities Management. “This is known as a premier destination. … Word is getting out.”
Regarding finances, officials had projected revenues of $355,000 in the first four months but took in only $288,000, said John McDonald, a regional director for SFM who oversees the Hoover Met Complex.
But they also have kept expenses down. Instead of spending $492,000 in the first four months, they spent $359,000. That equates to a bottom line loss of about $71,000 instead of the $137,000 that had been projected for that period, records show.
Additionally, the city spent $112,000 for management fees and $178,000 for other expenses such as utilities and maintenance on the Hoover Met Complex for that four-month period, City Administrator Allan Rice said. The city also right now is paying $2.7 million a year, or $225,000 a month, to pay off debt associated with construction of the complex.
Revenues from events, the RV Park and food and beverage contracts were higher than budgeted, but the center did not get as much income as expected from basketball tournaments, volleyball, youth programs and court rentals, records show.
This is partly due to the fact that many sports tournaments are booked a year in advance, and the Finley Center was not up and running when people were booking tournaments for this basketball and volleyball season, said Monty Jones, general manager for the Hoover Met Complex. He expects to see the number of tournaments rise for 2018, he said.
Plus, it took time to get the Hoover Met Complex’s full-time staff hired, Jones said. Given the timeframe they had, he thinks they have done a fairly good job of bringing in events and believes they have a lot of momentum going forward, he said.
Event bookings
The Finley Center, after serving as a FanFest area for the SEC Baseball Tournament in May, has hosted numerous events, including a college volleyball tournament, two Essence basketball tournaments, the Made South traveling market featuring goods made in the South, four gun shows by the Alabama Gun Collectors Association and Collectors and Shooters Co., the Junior League of Birmingham’s Market Noel and meetings for employees of Alabama Power Co. and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama.
The Hoover Met complex also has hosted the National Senior Games’ archery and race walking events, National High School Summer Baseball Showcase, USA Football 7 on 7 and an arts and crafts show by the Central Alabama Arts Guild.
Twenty-four more events have been booked, including seven gun shows in 2018 and a first-time Bama Bash volleyball tournament put on by a North Carolina group whose volleyball tournaments typically draw 100 or so teams, Jones said. And Hoover Met officials have proposals or contracts out for 48 more events, he said.
The Finley Center is going after a statewide gymnastics meet and some national events, such as the 2019 AAU Karate National Championship, he said. The NBA has expressed an interest in possibly bringing some programs to the Finley Center, Clement said.
The volume and velocity of interest from outside groups continues to increase, Clement said.
SFM also is committed to making sure local groups get use of the complex, Jones said. The Hoover Parks and Recreation Department has been able to use both the Finley Center and Hoover Metropolitan Stadium for volleyball, basketball, flag football and archery, Jones said. The Hoover Competitive Basketball Club and Hoover Soccer Club also have been using the Finley Center.
So far, Hoover residents and groups have had more than 11,000 hours of use of the facility, Jones said.
The center also has secured several tenants that officials say will help make the facility a success.
Some of the key ones are:
► The Alabama Sports Foundation, which plans to open a sports performance, training, rehab and education facility in more than 7,000 square feet of space in the center
► The Southern Performance Volleyball Academy, which trains about 300 girls and has had two teams win Amateur Athletic Union national championships
► J. Smith Hoops, a travel basketball program that conducts training, clinics and leagues for hundreds of kids
Here is a bit more about each of the tenants:
Alabama Sports Foundation
The Alabama Sports Foundation is refocusing its mission to put more emphasis on health, safety and performance, said Dr. Larry Lemak, a renowned orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine guru who is chairman of the foundation.
The performance center at the Finley Center will be multi-faceted, said Dr. Lemak, who founded the National Center for Sports Safety and American Sports Medicine Institute and who serves as medical director for Major League Soccer and the United Football League.
The foundation plans to have specialists work with athletes on improving various aspects of their performance, such as speed, agility, strength and proper athletic movements, Dr. Lemak said. So many athletic injuries can be prevented by teaching athletes the proper way to do things and how not to damage their bodies by overuse, he said.
The training will be both for individuals and teams at the youth, high school, college and professional level, but discounts will be given to Hoover residents and Hoover-based teams since the Finley Center is owned by the city, Dr. Lemak said.
The foundation also plans to offer training and conferences related to sports safety for groups such as coaches, parents and people in the field of sports medicine, he said.
The site also will provide sports medicine services for the entire Hoover Metropolitan Complex, which includes the Hoover Met Stadium, Finley Center and sports fields and tennis complex under construction, he said. It will be an evaluation center, not a medical treatment facility, he said.
With so many athletes coming to the Hoover Met Complex, “it’s a great place to do this and showcase it,” he said.
The foundation also would provide some rehabilitation services (sports therapy) at the Finley Center, Dr. Lemak said.
He is involved in a similar endeavor in Emerson, Georgia, as chairman of the board of the Aspire Institute, a mixed-use facility about the size of the Finley Center that is being built in the 1,800-acre LakePoint sports complex, he said.
There won’t be a lot of buildout required at the Finley Center, so he hopes to have the sports performance center opened there in the first quarter of 2018, he said.
Southern Performance Volleyball Academy
The Southern Performance Volleyball Academy started leasing office space at the Finley Center in August and began training girls there in September, director Julie Dailey said.
“It’s fantastic,” said Dailey, a former University of Alabama at Birmingham volleyball player who has coached Junior Olympic volleyball in the Birmingham area for more than 30 years. “We are highly thrilled to have a facility like this to have our girls train in, day in and day out. It’s state-of-the-art.”
Her academy’s previous facility in Irondale had 23,500 square feet of floor space, which was enough for five full-size volleyball courts, she said. The 155,000-square-foot Finley Center has 83,000 square feet of continuous floor space, which is enough for 17 full-size volleyball courts.
Her academy typically uses about half of the Finley Center court space every Monday through Thursday night, and it will use the entire facility for tournaments.
People are blown away by the amount of court space, Dailey said, but what really makes it special is the suspended floor that has special shock absorption built into it.
The floor gives a little bit when a player lands on it, which helps prevent fatigue and injury, particularly injuries to the spine, knees, hips and ankles, she said. That’s particularly good for female athletes and the way their bodies are built, she said.
There aren’t too many facilities around like this, especially owned by a city, she said. Some Division II college teams that played in a tournament at the Finley Center recently said the flooring was better than what their college has, she said.
Officials with the city of Hoover and Sports Facilities Management recruited her to bring her academy there, and “when they showed us this floor, that sealed the deal,” she said.
It’s an improvement from what they had in Irondale and much better than what they had in a former YMCA facility in Birmingham’s Southside community several years ago, Dailey said. In Birmingham, they basically had a thin wood floor over concrete, and she had to schedule certain days as “no jump” days, she said.
Her academy has 100 to 115 players ages 15 to 18, about 125 players ages 8-14 and more than 30 girls ages 7 and under, she said. They come from throughout Alabama and even from Mississippi and Georgia to train and be part of Southern Performance teams, she said.
She expects the Finley Center to attract a lot more volleyball tournaments, she said.
J. Smith Hoops
J. Smith Hoops offers basketball training, camps and travel teams for youth ages 5 to 18. The organization recently finished up its fall basketball league for middle and junior high school students, with about 325 kids on about 30 teams, said Jason Smith, a Hoover High graduate who played 11 years of professional basketball before retiring two years ago and taking over as director of the family business.
Before the Finley Center opened, J. Smith Hoops operated out of the Hoover Recreation Center, but the Finley Center is a welcome addition, he said.
“This is exactly what the city of Hoover needed,” Smith said. “I’ve never seen such excitement.”
The Finley Center has given his organization room to expand, he said. Next year, he plans to expand the fall league to include high school and expects to have 50 to 60 teams playing, he said. “We think we’re going to grow really big,” he said. “We don’t know if we’re going to have enough courts.”
What’s ahead
The Finley Center plans to open an indoor climbing wall in March, and construction continues on the outdoor fields.
The NCAA-size natural grass baseball field will be ready in time for the 2018 SEC Baseball Tournament in May, and the four artificial turf baseball/softball fields of the same size should be finished in August, Jones said.
The five multi-purpose fields that can be used for soccer, football, lacrosse, rugby and field hockey should be completed in the first quarter of 2019, and the 16 tennis courts are expected to be finished in January or February 2019, he said.
Clement said SFM will continue to work to improve the pace of bookings and sponsorships, communication with clients and its messaging system.
Councilman Mike Shaw, who is chairman of the city’s Hoover Metropolitan Complex Advisory Committee, said opening a new facility sometimes can be a little chaotic because there is a lot of work to get done with new staff while facilities are still under construction.
If the city were two years into operations and still behind on revenue predictions, he would be more concerned, but it’s still early in the process, Shaw said. “I think things are going pretty well,” he said. “I think we’re in good shape.”
