The soccer training facility is located at 1400 Commerce Drive in Franklin. The facility will provide year-round sports training and will be home to Soccer Central Academy.
Photo provided by City of Franklin
A fledgling year-round sports training business is setting up shop in Franklin.
With variance approval, experienced soccer coach Trevor Perry is bringing to Franklin the business model he started while living in upstate New York. He was unanimously approved Wednesday by the Franklin Metropolitan Board of Appeals to use space at 1400 Commerce Parkway, currently designated as an industrial complex, for sports training.
He plans to convert the building space owned by Rapid Prototyping into an indoor turf field that will provide year-round sports training to local athletes. The first sport to be trained there will be Mr Perry’s own football training business, Soccer Central Academy, which he said currently has 32 trainees enrolled.
Over the next few years, the plan is to expand the sports training facilities throughout the building by June 2025. Phase he is scheduled to begin in November and phase two he is scheduled to begin in July 2024.
The building currently serves as a storage location for Rapid Prototyping, but the local manufacturer plans to move the items currently stored there to a location the company plans to add to its current manufacturing space. ing. The company was approved for tax breaks to complete the project in September.
The Indiana Mentor building also houses Franklin’s offices, but the adult day care program is expected to move out of the space at the end of 2024, Perry said.
Once the entire building is available, the plan is to provide both an indoor turf field and batting cages. He said the building will be open to all local teams and players who wish to practice year-round.
Perry is also working with city planners to add an outdoor practice field to the vacant lot next to the building.
The change was approved with the condition that the facility be used for sports training but not for tournaments. With only 50 parking spaces available on the property, BZA attorney Lynn Gray wanted to make sure they were told in writing that this was not allowed.
Perry told the board he is not considering holding tournaments other than house league competitions, where trainees play against each other in three-on-three groups. The variance conditions provide that house league tournaments are allowed.
Those who knew of his success in New York encouraged him to do the same in Franklin, he said. Perry opened an indoor training center called the South Jeff Sportsplex in Adams, New York in 2020. The business practices many sports there, and it has also become a center for cheerleading, he said.
The Elkhart native sold his business there when his family decided to move back to Indiana. He has now settled in Franklin with his family, and he said he hopes to replicate the business model to help local athletes.
The local soccer community, both at the high school level and the youth sports level, is encouraged to train here year-round so that students do not have to travel, as the closest soccer training centers are in Burgersville and Indianapolis. encouraged. He said he was drawn into the field of rapid prototyping because one of the company’s owners is on the board of the Franklin Youth Soccer Association.
Having his own training space was also the only way to build Soccer Central Academy. He said local school playgrounds are overbooked, making it impossible for outside groups to have regular practice spots and to run successful businesses and attract customers.
