Sports training facility set to open in Ardsley
Posted by Paul Adler on Mon, Aug 27, 2012 @ 12:36 PM
ARDSLEY — A father’s frustration with driving his children to far-flung sports events has produced a $20 million indoor athletic center expected to open Sept. 10.
House of Sports at 1 Elm St. hopes to turn the village into a training and tournament destination with a 120,000-square-foot complex that includes a children’s nursery, restaurant, bar, fitness center and more than 100 covered parking spots. Don Scherer, House of Sports’ chief executive officer, said the idea for a sports training academy with adult-friendly services came to him while taking his son to sports events in Connecticut and New York City.
“That’s how I learned this community’s need,” said Scherer, 43, of Tarrytown, who is opening his complex in the former Selecto warehouse.
The training center will employ about 200 full- and part-time workers and will focus on basketball, lacrosse and baseball. The complex has four regulation-sized basketball courts and training baskets equipped with computer sensors to help students perfect their arcs.
The center has hired former coaches who have worked with some of the country’s best-known college teams, such as Andy Borman, who played basketball for Duke University when the school won the NCAA National Championship in 2001.
The lacrosse academy will be run by Ned Crotty, an all-American at Duke University and a member of the 2010 NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship team. Crotty received the 2010 Tewaaraton Trophy as the nation’s top lacrosse player.
Scherer said the 100-by240-foot artificial turf will allow House of Sports’ lacrosse academy to raise Westchester County players’ skill levels with winter practice.
“You go down south and and there is skills-building all year round. That has impacted the ability of our kids to compete,” Scherer said.
House of Sports will open as the Town of Greenburgh is embroiled in a controversy over a proposal to put a sports bubble on land at the former Frank’s Nursery & Crafts at 715 Dobbs Ferry Road in Hartsdale. The idea is to lease the property, acquired through a foreclosure for nonpayment of taxes, to Game On 365.
Some residents oppose the proposal and Scherer called the sports bubble proposal unfair competition.
“If they don’t have to pay rent at fair market value, if they don’t have to pay taxes, if they don’t have to do (environmental review) to the same level, if their cost structure is radically different from mine, it makes it very hard for me to compete,” said Scherer, who predicted that Greenburgh’s efforts to lease the property will be found unlawful.