Page 7 - BusinessWest February 19, 2024

ing; education; new clean-energy busi- nesses, such as Clean Crop Technology, which uses electricity to “revolutionize food safety”; and especially a burgeon- ing cannabis cluster, which has made effective use of the city’s huge inventory of old mill space for dispensaries and growing facilities alike.
The next frontier, if one chooses to call it that, could — and should — be sports, said the mayor, adding that the city has a strong tradition in this realm, which crosses many sports and several decades and includes everything from volleyball to Golden Gloves boxing to the Holyoke Blue Sox baseball team.
“Holyoke is a sports city; it always has been — we have very robust youth programs, baseball, basketball, foot- ball, and more, and the pipeline goes into our high schools,” Garcia said. “And that extends to recreational soft- ball — we have people from across this region and into Connecticut that
“Together with SFC, we will develop one of the top sports and event destinations in Massachusetts.”
come to Holyoke to play in two soft- ball leagues.
“One of the things we struggle with in Holyoke is adequate space for people to play, recreationally, but also tournaments; we don’t have the kind of capacity to host large-scale tourna- ments,” he went on, adding that the sports complex now on the drawing board would address this need and, while doing so, bring people to the city, providing a boost to existing busi- nesses and perhaps fueling new ones.
“Couple this need for such a facil- ity with the fact that Holyoke is the birthplace of volleyball and home to the Volleyball Hall of Fame, and we thought that this has to happen here — it has to happen in Holyoke,” he said.
As noted, the project must clear several hurdles, starting with the securing of what is expected to be several different sites, finalization of a design, and, especially, putting the funding in place.
Garcia said one of the next steps in the process is to assemble a fund- ing strategy, one that will involve bringing more investors, like Ruiz, to the table, and also likely involve pub- lic support, from MassDevelopment and other state agencies.
But several significant steps have already been taken, especially the hir- ing of SFC, which has a deep portfo- lio of sports-complex projects, includ- ing the Rhythm & Rally Sports & Events complex in Macon, Ga., touted as the world’s largest pickleball facil- ity; Allison Sports Town, an indoor/
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outdoor venue in Springfield, Mo. that spans 82 acres; Emerald Acres Sports Connection in Mattoon, Ill., which fea- tures an indoor field house, outdoor fields, and a walkable retail develop- ment space; the Fort Bend Epicenter in Rosenberg, Texas, a 230,000-square- foot, multi-purpose area that houses six basketball courts and 12 volleyball courts, with a capacity of 10,000 seats; and many others.
Ruiz called SFC the “best in the industry,” and noted that one of the next steps in the process of adding a
Cesar Ruiz says the planned facility could make Holyoke the “sports capital of New England.”
Complex
Continued on page 32
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