Charleston city official details draft of executive summary for Capital Sports Center

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WCHS) — The Capital Sports Center is coming to life on the pages of the draft of the executive summary.

“The Sports Center Authority hired sports facility advisors to sort of sit with them, learn about what they wanted in the facility, what they thought was going to be best for our city and our county,” Charleston Mayor Amy Goodwin’s Chief of Staff Matthew Sutton said.

Sutton calling the summary the playbook for how the Capital Sports Center is going to proceed moving forward.

“The goals essentially being to create a sports tourism destination in the city of Charleston that would add to the outdoor sports destination that Shawnee park already is and help to work with the coliseum, the convention center to continue to be able to be a destination for travel sports and generate economic revenue into our community,” he said.

The summary laying out the details for three floors and a mezzanine to include basketball courts, a family entertainment center and pickleball courts, among other amenities. The summary also laying out how much money the multimillion dollar center is expected to generate in the first five years.

“It really laid out how we can start to do this so that we can generate revenue immediately once the facility is built, and then work toward creating a second space that would be more of the aquatics and other sports that we could look forward to the future to help build on an overall brand for the city and the county to make us a complete sports tourism destination, ” Sutton told Eyewitness News.

One Charleston resident told Eyewitness News, she thinks the center will benefit the city and generate revenue.

“It will probably put our name on the map a little bit more,” Freda Reaves said. “You hang out at sports complexes, you’re there for games and stuff. You hungry afterwards. We have Outback, Chili’s and stuff like that. It’s gonna bring business there and also the food courts upstairs.”

Public comments about the center are still being accepted until June 30. You can email a comment to info@kanawha.us.