Lubbock Approves Lease for $51M Youth Sports Complex at Bill McAlister Park

This week, the Lubbock City Council voted 6-1 to accept a lease agreement for land at Bill McAlister Park. This was a big step toward the goal of a nonprofit to build a state-of-the-art youth sports facility in West Texas.

Lubbock Game Changers, a 501(c)(3) group that Rhett Butler started, asked to rent 20 acres in the city park to build The Hub, a $51 million structure. The planned building would be 140,000 square feet and have six regulation basketball courts, 12 volleyball courts, a sports medicine clinic, lounges, video game rooms, and food and snack options.

The championship venue with 1,800 seats and an ASB LumiFLEX Court, a high-tech glass digital surface that shows graphics and animations during games, would be the center of attention.

Butler shared, "I think every kid in America is going to want to come play on this." "My son was so excited when he saw that we were going to do this."

The project started with Butler's son, who saw the movie Space Jam and fell in love with basketball. Butler's wife often wondered why Lubbock did not have a facility like the ones they went to for tournaments elsewhere. In the end, that question turned into a multimillion-dollar plan for both local players and visitors to the area to play sports.

Butler thinks that The Hub could bring between 2,500 and 3,000 people to Lubbock every weekend, which would be suitable for hotels, restaurants, and other local businesses.

According to the deal, Lubbock Game Changers will have two years to get 85% of the project's money from sources other than the city. At the end of that time, both the city and the charity will assess the outcome and decide what to do next.

Long debates about the use of public land and the project's financial viability led to the council's acceptance. Six council members were in favor of the deal, but one was against it.

Upon completion, The Hub would be one of the major places in Texas for young sports and a major addition to Lubbock's sports infrastructure.

At the moment, Butler and Lubbock Game Changers have to work hard to get tens of millions of dollars in private funding for their big project.