Philip Flores
Evergreen Park, IL (USA)
Role(s):
Other
Freidine Enterprise LLC
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Startup
Location:
Orland Park
Industry:
Sports/Recreation
Year Founded:
2016
Number Employees:
100-250 people
Business Stage:
Creation/Idea
Entity Type:
Limited Liability Company
Description:
The Freidine Indoor Sports Center is designed to focus on sports training and competition for a vari-ety of team athletics for all age groups. With the intent to provide for everyone’s chosen sport. The field house caters to athletics including but not limited to: soccer, football, baseball, lacrosse, bas-ketball, and volleyball. To best accomplish this the focus has been on maintaining community in-volvement through close contact with the munici-pality at every stage of development while main-taining a marketing effort by reaching out to vari-ous athletic organizations and garnering their ex-pressed written support. This is a uniquely differ-ent approach to this kind of project and makes sure as much community support as possible is achieved. This prevents the typical kinds of devel-opment, planning, and programming errors with these kinds of projects.
This project capitalizes on the growing popularity of youth athletics in the southwest suburbs of Chi-cago. In Orland Park and the neighboring commu-nities there has been a great public demand for in-door athletic facilities since there is currently a lack of quality options for indoor practice. Adding to that there is also a steady upward trend national-ly in the popularity of team sports and recreation, which is creating more need for quality practice space. According to ESPN in 2013 over 21.5 mil-lion kids between the ages of 6 and 17 were in-volved in team sports in America and that number is growing. The top three sports with the most par-ticipation being soccer, baseball, and basketball. Also, according to the Columbus Dispatch in 2009 nonprofit sports alone in America had $5 billion a year spent on them.* A facility like the Freidine Indoor Sports Center would additionally offer a unique opportunity to attract new young families to the community of Orland Park by providing a place for organized activities for the growing com-munity’s population.
The field house only makes up one part of the Freidine Indoor Sports Center. The second is a substantial amount of retail to provide additional revenues to the whole project. In some cases park district run indoor facilities have difficulties gener-ating high enough revenues, and so to overcome this problem it requires the creation of an addition-al financial engine for the project. A financial en-gine in the form of 25,000 (URL removed). of prime retail space and 7,000 (URL removed). of office rental space. So a perfect site was selected to be able to incorporate this amount of retail and office into the larger vi-sion. Set across from an Advocate Hospital and a St. Xavier campus, at the corner of 183rd and La Grange in Orland Park. This design is not only meant to provide fresh options to a corner with sparse choices for the community, but will provide parents with the convenience and availability of shopping options while their children participate in their athletic activities.
This concept also fits in very well with what the Village itself has wanted for their community, and would help continue it economic development as laid out in its 2008 commissioned report. That 2030 vision report concluded that Orland Park’s effective trade area totaled 848,000 people. A reach extending as far north as Burr Ridge and as far west as Joliet. Orland Park states in their report that it maintains a continued desire for economic growth, and identified that their increased econom-ic prosperity will be achieved through its contin-ued presence as a regional retail destination.** With the whole project located in one of Chicago’s most successful suburbs, the Freidine Indoor Sports Center will provide one of the most desira-ble commodities for the fast growing populations of the south-west suburbs.