Nittany Valley Sports Centre completes $6 million expansion after delay during pandemic
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After months of construction and patience, the expanded Nittany Valley Sports Centre is complete and opened its doors fully in early January.
The facility’s owner, Michael Lee, said he’s already hosted multiple events, which include stringent health and safety protocols, since it fully opened Jan. 9.
“With our Phase II being finished we’ve been open for a couple of weeks,” he said late last month. “The first weekend we were open we hosted an indoor field hockey tournament. Just this past weekend we hosted a large gymnastics meet. ... We actually have events booked fairly consistently into the summer.”
Lee’s facility — which is located off Fox Hill Road, close to the University Park Airport — was set to complete Phase II of its construction project in September but was pushed back in part because the COVID-19 pandemic delayed the delivery of materials and in part because “construction sometimes gets that way.” During that time, the business was hit with financial losses and could see more in the future.
The project — which was estimated to cost $5.4 million and ended up costing around $6 million due to small alterations unrelated to the pandemic that occurred before it started — included an additional 50,000 square feet to be used for hard court sports and tournaments, among other large events.
While the delay itself did not have an enormous fiscal impact, the three-month closure the facility faced at the beginning of the pandemic and fewer people signing up for programs has, Lee said, and the financial future is unclear.
“We were forced to close and refund the last part of the season in the winter,” Lee said. “So there was definitely an impact there. And then our summer camp, which is usually a big revenue source in our in the summer, took a major hit. We have far fewer people registered for our program now than were registered a year ago, in many cases, because they’re still nervous about being in a indoor space with a bunch of people, and that’s understandable. ... So there are these longer term impacts that we may not even be able to account for now, but I would not at all be surprised if, when it’s all said and done we’re over a half a million dollars of impact.”
Lee and his staff made efforts to mitigate some of those losses and help those who could have been struggling with the pandemic, namely parents with children in school. Once school districts announced their reopening plans included a virtual option for students, Lee’s team thought of an idea to help.
He opened a class that would take up some of the open space left vacant during the day in the 70,000-square-foot — at the time — facility. Lee hired a teacher and was set to have the teacher monitor students and ensure they would be making the appropriate level of progress in remote learning. The program began in August but only lasted five weeks with a lower than expected sign-up rate.
Future events could bring added revenue that helps make up some of the loss from lower attendance. The facility is set to host several basketball and wrestling tournaments, with an eye toward even greater events down the line with the help of the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau.
“That facility that Michael has over there is not necessarily just limited to sports,” HVAB President and CEO Fritz Smith said. “I think we also envision that they might be able to hold some trade shows over there. I think the space can work for that. We’ll also be trying to help them try and attract some of those as well.”
In the meantime, Lee will continue to host events as safely as possible at his facility, with an emphasis on the protocols and ensuring everyone feels safe participating in the events, including having spectators and teams only stay in the building for the games that pertain to them.
“We’re not crossing people coming and going,” Lee said. “We’re limiting the number of people in the building and things like that. Everybody’s wearing a mask, even athletes are wearing masks while they’re playing. So there are a lot of those types of things that are very different than they might be under normal circumstances. But we are permitted to — and are fortunate enough — that we’re getting people to come and play in events here.”
This story was originally published February 8, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
