On Wednesday, August 15, the Austin City Council voted 7-4 to approve a term sheet for a long-term lease on the 24-acre, city-owned McKalla Place site in north Austin between Precourt Sports Ventures (PSV) and the city. This agreement enables Columbus Crew Soccer Club owner and PSV founder Anthony Precourt to begin financing an estimated $200 million soccer stadium to be built on the tract of land near The Domain.
The term sheet outlines the terms and conditions of a lease on the currently disused McKalla Place site, and city staff members are now directed to “negotiate and execute” a final agreement with PSV for construction, lease and occupancy of a 20,000 seat stadium and park. The agreement also includes provisions for affordable housing, public transportation and environmental issues.
With the term sheet approval being the last say the council has in the matter, the debate was lengthy and contentious, with the four dissenting council members expressing concerns that the city was giving too much of a subsidy to PSV and overlooking other development opportunities for the site.
From 1958 to February 1985, when an explosion and fire permanently shut the operation down, the tract at 10400 McKalla Place was the site of a Reichhold Chemicals manufacturing facility and solid waste disposal site. Though Reichhold filed a closure plan with state environmental regulators and put the property up for sale, nine years later, state inspectors still found evidence of soil contamination.
After buying the property in 1995 for just over a million dollars, the city planned to build its North Service Center for Water Utilities on the site, but another explosion during a storm sewer line installation in 2003 halted that venture. The city then spent several million dollars to fully remediate the site and sued Reichhold for damages in 2007. By 2010, the land was on the city’s list of underutilized properties with development potential.
Precourt announced his plan to move the team from Columbus to Austin in October 2017, though many think he had been planning the relocation since buying the Crew four years earlier. Major League Soccer made the move conditional upon the team playing in a centrally-located, soccer-specific stadium in Austin.
With city council approved obtained, Precourt now hopes to have the final deal for McKalla Place in time to have the team ready to play in Austin beginning in the spring of 2019. With the new stadium not scheduled to be ready until the start of the 2021 MLS season, the team would temporarily play at the University of Texas’ Mike A. Myers Stadium and Soccer Field.
But local soccer fans shouldn’t get too excited just yet. Thousands of Crew supporters and hundreds of local business community figures in Columbus are battling to keep the team in Ohio. Their hope is to implement a new downtown stadium plan of their own and potentially buy the team from Precourt.
Their biggest hope to stall the move is a lawsuit brought by the city of Columbus and the state of Ohio against PSV. The suit claims that PSV must comply with state law that says that sports owners receiving public benefit must provide six months’ notice and the opportunity for locals to purchase a team before moving. A hearing on PSV and MLS’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit is scheduled for September 4.
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