Kansas City Current unveils newest multimillion-dollar performance center
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- KC Current invested $52 million across Riverside for training and stadium facilities.
- New 2,000-seat Riverside Stadium and Performance Center hosts KC Current II and training
- Facility includes heated grass pitch, Goal Station system, expanded weight room and sauna.
Across the street from the Kansas City Current’s expanding training facilities is a bustling industrial park.
As players and the club work to be the best women’s soccer team on the planet at 1 Teal Rising Way off of I-635, construction is boisterous and 18-wheelers continuously roll up and down the street across from the complex.
Before the Current began building on the 75 acres of land it occupies in Riverside, industrial development was pushed to build on the land for years, Riverside Mayor Kathy Rose told The Star. Rose wanted to create a vibrant interchange for the 6-square-mile city, and held off those plans in hopes of office space or retail developers.
But in 2019, Rose and city officials began meeting with developers who wanted to bring sports venues to the area. After meeting with Current co-owners Chris and Angie Long, all parties were eager to work with each other to build a home for Kansas City’s NWSL team.
“We were struck immediately by the location,” Chris Long told reporters. “It is 15 to 20 minutes from everywhere, and the sheer amount of land we thought would give us optionality. You have a vision, obviously, that vision is one where you kind of continually reassess it. And we wanted to not be ... landlocked in an area where we couldn’t pursue an ambitious project that would rival anything in global football. So this was the best.”
“We are aligned on all the development things that have happened down there, between the Longs and us at the city,” Rose told The Star. “It’s been a very wonderful partnership.”
And the Current has been building ever since.
The team’s $19 million Riverside training facility, the University of Kansas Health System Training Center, opened in 2022. The $140 million CPKC Stadium, the Current’s home stadium, opened along Berkley Riverfront two years later with much fanfare.
And on Tuesday, the Current introduced its newest addition to its training grounds, 2,000-seat Riverside Stadium and Performance Center, which will host its second team, KC Current II, and support the club’s senior roster and youth development program. The Current has invested $52 million total into the Riverside training facilities.
The state-of-the-art performance center features grass and turf training pitches, including a heated grass pitch, an expanded weight room and a sauna. The facility also has a Goal Station system in an outdoor training space; the system utilizes grounded platforms to bounce passes off of high-frequency sensors to integrate game-like decision-making and physical performance in a training setting.
Riverside Stadium will host home matches for KC Current II. Both senior and second teams will be based in the new facility while the Netherlands is using the KU Health System training ground as a base camp. The new performance center has been used by both teams since the senior team returned to KC from spending preseason prep in California.
The Longs reviewed the best facilities in men’s and women’s soccer when they were planning their facilities. They called it an “arms race” when they spoke about the need to have world-class facilities to compete on a global scale.
“In 2021, we began a new era of facilities built for women’s sports,” Chris Long said during a news conference for the facility. “And you see it now, many, many, many people have it. More investments coming. I sit on the expansion committee for the NWSL. More great stuff is coming to our beloved league.”
The expansion comes just a few weeks before the Current begin the NWSL season at home against the Utah Royals on March 14.
