As you may have noticed, over the past few months, we’ve been following the developments in the effort to bring professional soccer to Austin. December looks to have been a pivotal month.
To recap, Precourt Sports Ventures (PSV), operator of Columbus Crew (one of Major League Soccer’s flagship franchises), had initially been exploring moving the Crew to Austin. It collaborated with the city to find a publicly-owned property on which to potentially build a soccer-specific stadium for the prospective Austin team. This past summer, an unused 24-acre plot of land located at 10414 McKalla Place, near the corner of Braker and Burnet in North Austin, was identified as the stadium location, and in August, the Austin City Council gave city officials approval to negotiate the land development deal with PSV.
Meanwhile, a grassroots effort in Columbus to keep the Crew in Central Ohio gained enough traction to motivate the city of Columbus and the state of Ohio to sue PSV to keep the team from moving to Texas. The suit threatened to stall or cancel the move entirely, but in developments that benefit soccer fans in both Columbus and Austin, a new ownership group stepped forward to buy the Crew from PSV and keep the team in Ohio’s capital city. Meanwhile MLS agreed to grant PSV rights to a new franchise, to be called Austin FC.
In December, news arrived that the deal to keep the Crew in Columbus had been reached, and that the lawsuit has been dismissed. At the same time, the city of Austin announced that it had reached a deal with PSV to build the new $225 million soccer park and stadium. The centerpiece of the project will be a 20-21,000 capacity natural grass, open-air stadium, which will also be used as an entertainment and multi-purpose event venue for the city. The project will also include a park and open space that will be available to the public throughout the year.
Though the facility will be publicly owned, PSV will fund all construction and operating costs during the course of the club’s lease of the stadium. Rent will be $550,000 annually for the duration of the lease. In addition, PSV will provide some $13 million in donations to youth soccer programs, affordable housing development and other charitable contributions, and $3.54 million directly to CapMetro over 15 years. The latter contribution is expected to help fund the move of MetroRail’s Kramer Lane station to a location next to the stadium, which could alleviate concerns about traffic and parking congestion.
City officials conveyed that the next step is for PSV to go through the city’s permitting process just like any other developer hoping to build in Austin would be required to do. PSV also said that it is in the process of hiring a general contractor that will realize the architectural designs it has already unveiled.
Groundbreaking is scheduled to begin next year, with the stadium projected to be ready in the spring of 2021. MLS has not released when the team will be given the greenlight to start play. Though it seems likely that Austin FC will launch in conjunction with the stadium opening, there may be an option to start play in spring 2020 and use a temporary facility, such as UT’s Mike A. Myers Stadium and Soccer Field, for a season.While you’re waiting for Austin FC to become a reality, you can still check out pro soccer in Austin starting this March, when Austin Bold FC debuts in the USL Championship league, a minor pro league considered one division below MLS. The new team will play in a new 5,000 seat stadium located at the Circuit of the Americas racetrack. The season starts on March 9, with the first home game on March 30.