It was in early 2021 when we heard about the original concept of the United States Performance Center (USPC), which planned to repurpose a towel and pillow factory and a surrounding campus in Kannapolis, N.C. for a sports lab and athletic fields suitable for tournaments, with an eye towards getting national governing bodies of sport to relocate to greater Charlotte.
Since then, according to stories in The Assembly and the Raleigh News & Observer, the U.S. Performance Center’s original goals have not been realized, even after spending some $45.5 million of state taxpayer money over three years.
Thing is, the original plans were somewhat more grandiose in terms of outlay. We read about spending which would exceed a billion dollars for the repurposing of the Kannapolis campus with athletic fields in addition to the sports performance lab which is already in place.
It’s a pretty spectacular campus, if you look at this photo posted on social media:
But some of the expansion plans were halted. Others went forward at substantial cost. While state money was supposed to fund capital needs for the USPC, documents show that only about $10 million has been spent on facilities or equipment — $7 million of which was spent on the blue Poligras field at UNC-Charlotte for the U.S. women’s national field hockey team.
A spokesman for USPC says that there would be upwards of 200 athletic tournaments in several sports by the end of 2026, with a possible hosting of the 2027 World Military Games, a multi-sport competition for athletes serving in the military.
“We are confident North Carolina’s investment will continue to pay off for the state,” spokesman Jonathan Felts tells The Assembly. “The goal is to get [national governing bodies] to relocate to North Carolina and energize greater economic development potential in the arena of athletic tourism.”
The USPC is facing a problem: chiefly that the vast majority of national governing bodies are located in Colorado Springs, which is not only at altitude (and advantageous for training purposes), but has been the home of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) since the signing of the Amateur Sports Act in 1978. The Assembly points out that, in October of this year, the USOPC can buy itself out of an economic development agreement in place with the city of Colorado Springs.
Whether a buyout is imminent, or will lead to a flood of administrators and athletes to North Carolina is yet to be seen. Right now, a number of athletes, from the U.S. women’s Olympic field hockey team to individual athletes from judo to taekwondo to bobsleigh, are training in Kannapolis.
The money spent thus far by USPC has been put under scrutiny, from hotel rooms to treadmills to a raft of consultants. Many of the consultant agreements have political connections within North Carolina. One example is a $373.000 grant made to consultant Seneca Jacobs, an attorney and engineer who has given $300,000 in campaign contributions since 2012.
Another consultant, Marion Warren, received $390,000 in grants. Warren’s company, Juristrat, is part of a grand jury investigation surrounding a non-profit named Caitlyn’s Courage, a non-profit which received some $3.5 million from the state of North Carolina.
Auditors from the state of North Carolina are currently undergoing a review of the USPC’s expenses. I’ll be interested to read exactly what they find.
