City Receives Unsolicited Proposal to Construct Colossal Sports Complex

Should Alexandria lease parkland to a private company to build a massive sports and entertainment complex?

That will ultimately be the question for Alexandria City Council after the city received an unprecedented and unsolicited offer from St. James Group, LLC., to build a huge athletics complex on the 15-acre site of Hensley Park on Eisenhower Avenue.

The proposed complex includes a multitude of amenities currently not available in the city, including an Olympic-sized indoor pool and ice-skating rinks.

Other amenities include an 80,000-square-foot multi-purpose field house; a baseball center with four batting cages for baseball and softball; four NCAA regulation-sized basketball and volleyball courts; a therapy pool, water park play area for children, and outdoor family pool; two NHL-regulation ice rinks for hockey, figure skating and open skating sessions; a 15,000-square-foot gymnastics training space; 20,000 square feet of rock climbing walls; a golf and racquet club with year-round driving range, six indoor tennis courts and eight squash courts; 30,000-square-foot health center and a childcare center.  

Nestled between Eisenhower Avenue and I-95 across from the Vola Lawson Animal Shelter, Hensley Field contains three ball fields and one rectangular playing field. 

The St. James Group has scheduled a community meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday, July 1, at the Holiday Inn located at 2460 Eisenhower Ave. to further explain the proposal. A second meeting is tentatively scheduled the week of July 8. City staff is not hosting these meetings, but will likely be in attendance.

Other outreach and community discussion will continue through the fall, though Mayor Bill Euille and other members of council were quick to state that the city is not endorsing the project and has not approved it.

“I think this could be a fantastic project, I just don’t want to get accused that we rushed to judgment,” Euille said.

City staff said it wants the community looped in on the project early in the planning process.

“Why not get the public involved with whatever info the group wants to bring forward?,” Councilman Tim Lovain said.

Euille said Tuesday that the city’s legal process calls for pursuing other bids. In the fall, City Manager Rashad Young will make a recommendation on whether to issue a request for proposals—a competitive public process by which the city issues criteria for the project and other independent bidders submit proposals.

If a request is issued, the proposals will be reviewed in early 2014.   

More information about the proposal is available on the city’s website.